


Restitution Of The Rings

by gwynseren



Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Angst and Tragedy, Dark, Death, Feels, Gen, Horror, Psychological Horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-05
Updated: 2018-11-12
Packaged: 2019-07-07 09:43:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 26,058
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15905775
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gwynseren/pseuds/gwynseren
Summary: AU in which Thorin didn't die and became king in Erebor and the consequences that befall the rest of middle earth. Prompt was for a Dark Middle Earth AU re-imagining the 60 years between The Hobbit and The Lord of The Rings if the banishment of Sauron (movie cannon) was not as successful as believed. Told from the perspective of the dwarves of Erebor and touching on some of the early events in The Fellowship. Contains dark themes, character death and ideas/suggestions some may find troubling but the horror is psychological, it contains no gore or violence.





	1. Three

The days were shorter than they once were.

“Do you not think so, Balin?”

The Hobbit Bilbo Baggins stood arms folded beside his little stove, waiting for the kettle to boil. Behind him there was a small, circular window - not unlike those he had left behind in his home, Bag End of the Shire – and as he waited he looked out of it over his shoulder and watched the sky. There he saw dark clouds gathering, as deep and grey as the purest iron that was mined from the mountain, and he thought that they must have been gathering for quite a while now; so long in fact that the light of the sun, which was not pale like the dawn but yellow like kindling fire, no longer seemed to be trying to push through but rather gave the impression that it was being held back…  
The kettle whistled and drew his attention back into the room with a jolt. Bilbo stepped forward quickly, pulling his napkin from the waistband of his trousers. He covered his hand and then lifted the hot, spitting kettle free from the stove and brought it over to the table, where he placed it carefully down onto a slab of cold, polished slate. He looked across at his old friend and smiled tightly. The napkin slipped from his hand. Balin looked over at him, but said nothing. Bilbo’s smile faltered. Bits of old memories crossed his face like mismatched shadows and he sank down onto his stool. 

“It grows dark already,” he said in hushed tones, speaking as if to himself or down into the stone floor beneath the table. 

Balin got up from his chair and helped himself to Bilbo’s napkin. With a small, pointed cough he lifted the kettle and then poured the tea into the china cups that Bilbo had already set out. The smell of strong herbs filled the room; mint and a little ginger mixed with such plants that could thrive in the thickets that covered the mountainside. Bilbo hardly noticed. He was staring into the wood of the table, tracing the patterns he found there with his thumb; circular clocks of distant years and fruitful harvests, becoming yellower and yellower as his thumb traveled outwards, and then the signs of worms and – at the youngest wood – disease. 

“Days grow ever shorter, lad,” Balin said after a quick backwards glance at the door. He held Bilbo’s cup out to him with a nod, forcing Bilbo to sit upright and take it from him, “Ever has it been the same, at Winter time.”

Balin took his own cup of tea back to his chair and Bilbo noticed how slow the old dwarf’s movements had become. His once-supple muscles were oddly strained and peculiar knots of unknown origins had formed along the bones of his hands and fingers. Bilbo remembered noticing them before. He’d meant to ask about them - but he couldn’t remember if he had.  
“Now then, whatever happened to that mention of seed cake, eh? Finest in all of Erebor!”  
Balin’s strong voice drew Bilbo back into the room again and he jumped up instinctively and went to fetch the cake stand. He carried it across from the stove to the table and put it down gently before unwrapping the cake from its cheesecloth covering. It was a good bake, golden brown and thick with generous helpings of butter, and Bilbo’s heart cheered a little at the sight of it. He lifted a knife to cut off the first piece - but then he stopped, lowering it slightly. A thought had suddenly struck him.  
“But…” he began, and although Balin looked across at him somewhat sharply he took a shaky breath and persevered.  
“Balin……by my reckoning…..it’s midsummer.”  
Balin looked at him for a long while at that and Bilbo watched as many expressions for which he couldn’t remember the names crossed Balin’s face.  
“Well,” Balin said when they had eventually all passed, “you must have reckoned wrong then laddie.”  
Bilbo sighed. Lifting the knife once more, he cut off a piece of cake and nudged it gently onto a plate. Do not count the days – Thorin’s voice came to him like an echo that had never really stopped ringing. Bilbo passed the plate across to his friend. He realised that Balin should report him. It was some comfort, at least, to know that he wouldn’t.  
“What…..” Bilbo’s voice faltered a little, but a small part of him somewhere that still knew the importance of questions realised that he was running short of time.  
“What reason did Thorin give us again? Balin?” the hobbit reached out to clutch Balin’s hand, but his aim fell short as if blown by some ill-meaning wind, “why can’t I remember?”  
The hushed words, although desperate, fell flat and echoless amongst the tea-things. Balin put down his plate and leaned his face across the table towards Bilbo.  
“Bilbo,” he said and his voice was gentle and kind as it ever had been of old, “are we not two old friends having a farewell tea?”  
Bilbo looked at the cake knife in his hand, at the cup of tea at his elbow, and at his grandmother’s old china plates.  
“Yes,” he said slowly, taking in the sight of doilies he couldn’t place amongst his history, “Yes, I suppose we are.”  
He slowly lifted the cake knife again and then cut himself a piece.  
For a while they ate together in silence. The tea, having brewed too long, had become bitter and after a few mouthfuls Bilbo found that the cake was not as well baked as he had thought, and so he put down his slice and instead pushed crumbs around the plate. Balin ate well across from him, but his eyes were pensive.  
“You should eat more,” he suggested to Bilbo lightly, “You’re more taut than any hobbit should be.”  
Bilbo looked up sharply. He’d been reminded of something that, whilst always on his mind, still constantly surprised him; the thought of other hobbits, and one in particular.  
“You know, I wish you didn’t have to go….”  
“Bilbo…..”  
“Or rather, I wish I were going with you. It’s not like I haven’t done that journey before; I-I wouldn’t be any trouble to you…..”  
“Bilbo…..”  
“I could even be helpful, you know – ahem, mm –“  
“Bilbo I don’t see…”  
“And I wouldn’t interfere! We could part ways at Moria, and from there it’s only…….it’s only…..Balin…”  
Balin’s old face looked regretfully over at Bilbo and then with some little hesitation he reached out for Bilbo’s hand and took hold of it. Bilbo looked down at where Balin’s fingers crossed his own and he realised with some surprise that where they touched, his skin felt warm. It was a long absent feeling.  
“You have done well by your nephew, Bilbo,” Balin said gently, “You have sent him more than he could ever need in a lifetime. He is well provided for, so rest assured. You have done more than enough.”  
Bilbo closed his eyes and sighed despondently. When he opened them again he looked down into his cup of now cold tea and saw that the leaves had risen to the top.  
“I have done more than enough…” he repeated quietly, although he couldn’t keep the uncertainty from showing on his face, “So everyone keeps telling me. That poor boy…..”  
Balin let go of his hand with a sigh and took up his tea once again.  
“You are going then?” Bilbo asked him after a short while, “You will leave, tomorrow, with the dawn?”  
“Aye. The time has come.”  
Bilbo gave Balin a sad smile.  
“I wish you did not have to go,” he said again, “I will be quite lost, I think, without you here.”  
Balin put down his cup and pushed away his plate. A distant grief - like that of starlight; watchful but remote, not unkind but un-reaching - unfurled in his eyes as he looked at Bilbo the way he used to look at Thorin before the Quest.  
“I know,” he said gently, “But we cannot wait any longer. We’re isolated here, Bilbo. All our kin and all our wealth in just one place. We learned the folly of such a thing long ago. The mountain is a far-off and lonely place. We need to re-colonise; spread ourselves out, distribute the wealth. In that way, we guard against future disaster. Thorin does not send us away lightly; indeed he took much convincing. But Bilbo, I want to go. It is the one thing left that I would do, before I…..”  
Balin stopped and Bilbo deflated, sinking into his shoulders and spine. He began to pick at the crocheted end of one of the doilies, staring at it as if it were one of his riddles. He didn’t recognise its patterns; complicated stitches of lines weaving in and out and around each other, doubling back and criss-crossing their sisters, interspersed with a symbol that although Bilbo thought he’d seen before – in the corners of corridors, maybe, etched into the stone and branded into helmets and in headings on pieces of paper – he still did not recognise. It was all too hazy, like a dream blurred into memory.  
“I will see you again, though,” he said uncertainly, looking up and giving his friend a hopeful smile, “Won’t I, Balin?”  
Balin smiled back at him.  
“Of course, lad. Once we have established ourselves in Moria we will be able to provide safe passage to the mountain. Thorin will of course want to visit, and he may bring you with him. And from there who knows. It is not so far to the Shire.”  
Bilbo looked gratefully at Balin and his fingers stopped their work.  
They settled into a tolerable quiet during which Balin finished his cake and Bilbo stared, seemly aimlessly, around his little room. Thorin had commissioned it for him, back during the Great Rebuilding. He’d said he wanted Bilbo to have ‘a little slice of the Shire’ here in the mountain, and so it had been built on the side with the most sun. Some of Bilbo’s own things from Bag End had even been brought over to furnish it, and yet Bilbo still didn’t understand why it was here. It wasn’t like he needed a slice when he had the whole Shire to return to…..to return to…..  
Return…..  
Bilbo’s eyes drifted over to the window and there once more he saw the gathering clouds. He frowned. Something about them made the sky heavy and the air heavy and even his bones heavy as if they were too dense for his flesh. And then there was the dark: coming early, leaving late…….  
How menacingly did those clouds linger in the sky…….  
“Balin,” Bilbo whispered, leaning across the table to the old dwarf yet again, “Have you noticed, Balin? The days. Th- the days are growing shorter.”  
~  
Balin left with the dawn as promised. The light was a struggle of pale blue against the thick, dark clouds and so Balin and his company – Ori had gone with him, as well as many others– could hardly be seen as they first crossed the plains towards Dale and then ascended one of the far hills, making their journey south-west towards Moria. Bilbo stood on the battlements and watched them go, huddled in a thick coat of sheep’s wool and leather. He was not alone. At first many stood alongside him, saying their farewells in silence, but little by little they left, driven by the cold and the earliness of the morning, until only Kili remained, watching the company disappear into the distance with regret far deeper than his years should have allowed.  
“There goes the last friendly face in Erebor.” He said once they were sure they were alone, turning to give Bilbo a mournful look, and Bilbo thought that it was much like a wake indeed; none of them ever expected to see Balin again. 

“I don’t suppose you could steal us a little more sun, Bilbo?” Kili said after a little while, “We could certainly do with it.”  
Bilbo stamped his feet and curled further into his coat, looking down at the stone floor as he coughed. The battlement torches were still lit and without them the floor could not be seen, so thick was the cover of the clouds.  
“Ummmmm, no” He said and he turned to give Kili a smile that he hoped was more pleasant than the gloom that surrounded them, “That would be a skill of the Elves, perhaps. Even Gandalf once said he could do nothing to change the will of the weather….”  
His voice trailed off as overhead the wind blew and caught the angles of the battlements in a low whistle that sounded like a moan. Bilbo and Kili fell into silence. They looked back out towards the horizon and resumed their watch together. Neither of them could remember when they had last heard from the Grey Pilgrim: neither of them could bring themselves to ask what that meant.  
After some time, Bilbo coughed once more and tried to give Kili another well-meaning smile.  
“You know, I think we could all do with a little holiday. Somewhere where it’s sunny; in the South maybe. We could….we could picnic along a river. Catch fish. Swim. Hmm? When was the last time you and I went swimming? I could ask Thorin, and……”  
Bilbo’s voice trailed off yet again and in the silence that followed Kili turned and walked slowly towards him. The regret in his eyes was deep with the memories of better days and old hopes that made the grim dark of the morning even more woeful, and Bilbo knew that Kili would have embraced him, if it weren’t forbidden.  
“I have not forgotten your situation, Bilbo.” Kili said remorsefully, his voice gruff as if sore, “I think about you every chance I get. I wish there were more I could do for you, but I am barely keeping on top of things as it is. There are so many rumours….whispers of this and that…changing shapes in the night…” Kili stopped and sighed and looked out again into the distance, “Sometimes, I cannot tell if I am waking or dreaming. All seems…dim, like shadows crossing in the darkness.”  
Bilbo nodded. He understood Kili; not his words, exactly – Bilbo heard little of rumour and he did not get much conversation plain or otherwise, if truth be told – but he knew what it was like amongst them whenever anyone tried. It was all muddled, as if somehow, despite all their efforts, no dwarf in the halls of Erebor ever really knew what was going on with another. Important conversations missed their mark or became garbled in translation; neighbour forgot neighbour even though they passed each other often in the halls, and things that otherwise should have drawn their attention were not seen or were overlooked or sometimes even seen but then forgotten. Bilbo remembered trying to say as much a long while ago…..but at the time the words had resisted his tongue and since then he’d kept forgetting, as he now so often did.  
Bilbo might have dwelt more on it, but his thoughts were interrupted when Kili suddenly cried out, piercing the silence. Bilbo looked up to see Kili leaning out over the battlement wall, his eyes peering into the near distance. Something had caught his attention. Bilbo stepped up behind him and tried to follow his gaze, wondering what he could have seen. Kili was calling behind him for a looking-glass, but no one came. The Guards had lately developed a habit of only attending when summoned by Thorin. Frustrated, Kili growled and then leaned out even further over the wall, straining to make better sense of the shapes in the struggling daylight.  
“Bilbo…Bilbo, do you see? Are those…..who are those dwarfs, coming down the ridge yonder? Do they bare our standard?”  
Bilbo looked. A small company of dwarves were indeed climbing down the banks of the mountain to their right, just north of where Balin had not long disappeared. They were tumbling down the crooked paths with a languor quite misplaced, for they must have marched through the night. No sentinels had sounded. Bilbo saw that they were well armed and numbered just enough to make up a Guard.  
“They’re-“he began, but a voice from behind them interrupted him.  
“They are the Guard from the Western Watch.”  
Neither Kili nor Bilbo were surprised; the inhabitants of Erebor had long grown used to their King’s unusual habit of materialising suddenly from out of the shadows themselves. Kili turned and gave his Uncle a confused look.  
“I don’t understand,” he said, looking between Thorin and the Guard in the distance, “We’ve sent out no replacements….are they deserters?!”  
Thorin stood half in shadow. He had on his crown and his dark furs and they were so matched in colour and thickness to his hair and his beard that Bilbo found it difficult to tell where one started and the other stopped. Looking out at them from this dark halo, Thorin’s face seemed a small, pale and very strange thing; and even smaller and stranger were his eyes, like two distant pieces of opal. He stepped slowly out into the wind and the light of the battlements with a heavy thud of much weight and many chains, and for a moment Bilbo almost thought he saw a flash of gentleness lighten Thorin’s features as he looked at the still-beardless face of his youngest nephew - but it could not have been.  
“I summed their return,” Thorin said detachedly, “Some days ago now.”  
“But…..how can that be?” Kili turned aside from the battlements and faced his uncle, searching his unreadable face with a puzzled brow, “Those paths are our only link with Mirkwood and the rest of the West. If we do not guard them then the orcs will come and they will be overrun! We will not be able to get as much as a message through! Uncle, why have you stopped the guard?”  
Thorin looked down at Kili and Bilbo saw something hidden in his expression behind the dark gleam of his eyes.  
“I’ve stopped it because we no longer have any need of it.” He said without tone.  
Kili’s face flooded with alarm. He reached out for Thorin’s forearm, but the King Under The Mountain had declared long ago that he could not bear to be touched and Kili remembered just in time. Bilbo was grateful; in a panic, he had almost reached out to stop him.  
“Do we turn our back on our allies?” Kili asked hurriedly, imploring Thorin with his eyes,  
”Do we not still treat with the Elves?”  
“We do not, Kili. The Elves are gone.”  
Thorin’s last word rang out like a knell along the battlements – gone. Its echoes seemed to leave lasting imprints in the air that would not fade. Bilbo stifled a gasp. He looked across at Kili and saw that the blow of Thorin’s words had made their mark; Kili’s face had fallen and his skin had dropped to a shocked white, although some of the rouge of his fervour still reddened his cheeks.  
“G – gone?” Kili asked, stuttering, “What do you mean, gone?”  
Bilbo watched as Kili searched his uncle’s face for signs of deception or madness or any such thing that would give him hope that what Thorin had said wasn’t true – that it was just some plot or trick of his ill-humour – but he found none. A triumphant sort of smirk then flashed across Thorin face, as fleeting as a shadow passing across the face of the moon but so menacing that neither Kili nor Bilbo could possibly have missed it.  
“The Elves have left Middle Earth,” he said emotionlessly, “For years their power has been dwindling, and now it is finally spent. I had word from Elrond the Half-Elven some weeks ago. They were not made strong to endure as we were; they have wilted under the new sun. They took to their ships, and are gone. Mirkwood, and all others like it, are now abandoned.”  
If Kili could have collapsed, he would have. Bilbo saw one of his knees give way and the foot beneath it slip. But the young Prince could not afford a fall, least of all in front of his Uncle King. He recovered, but he had gone deathly pale and for a while he almost seemed to choke.  
“No…..” he said after a few seconds had passed, “No, it – it cannot be.”  
“I’m afraid you’ll find that it is.” Thorin said and then without another word he turned his back to them and began to walk back into the dark of the Halls.  
Kili sprang quickly after him and Bilbo, frightened for what may happen, followed swiftly behind. They passed through the side door and into the First Chamber. Thorin was already descending the stairs ahead of them as Kili called out after him:  
“They cannot be gone!”  
“Whether you accept it or not, Kili Durin, it will not make a difference; the Elves will still be gone from these lands.” Thorin answered without turning his head or missing a step.  
Kili dashed even faster after him, ducking through arches and then tripping down the stairs with almost clumsy feet, such was his haste. Bilbo, if he had been anything other than a hobbit now well versed in the art of Burglary and the precariousness of Erebor’s Stairs, would have had a hard time keeping up.  
“But….” Kili called out once again to the receding back of Thorin’s head, “They would have said something. They would not just go –“  
“And they did. To me.”  
Thorin still did not stop; indeed to Bilbo it seemed that he was enjoying himself and had even picked up speed. He was heading to the Throne Room, and Bilbo had a sense of foreboding.  
“But they would not just go!” Kili insisted, becoming angry to the point where his feet caught him up with Thorin, “They would not leave us like this; not like this, not now when –“  
They had entered the Throne Room and were mid-way along the processional to the Throne when Thorin finally turned, spinning in a great billow of furs and hair and the clanking of his sword, and bore down on Kili like a wolf in the throes of a kill.  
“When what?” he shouted through gritted teeth as his face finally cracked and showed his distain. He raised his head, lengthening his frame so that he became tall and imposing, and then he cast his arms wide about him and turned slowly on the spot, as if to display to Kili his great vastness.  
“When we are prosperous?” Thorin continued, “When we are wealthy beyond our hopes, our grief? When all we have worked for and all we have wanted has come to be? What of the Elves?! Well did they make their decision; they shall not be missed.”  
Bilbo came to a stop behind Kili and his first thought was to summon help. But who could he call? Who would come? Balin was gone……like the sun…..like the Elves…….  
Thorin turned his back to them once more and continued towards his Throne. For a moment, Bilbo hoped that would be it, but Kili was not done. Kili was never done: Bilbo feared that in the end Kili alone would be left, still raging against this darkness.  
“She would have told me.” Kili said, lifting up his head defiantly. Thorin froze in his step.  
A deadly silence descended and hung over the Throne Room.  
Behind them, Bilbo uttered a frustrated sound and looked desperately at the floor. He wished he could remember….he knew that he used to be able to do this. He used to have a gift for finding the right words and the right solution in handling dwarves and their tempers, even if it carried a risk. Vaguely, he remembered Thorin like this – suddenly wild, explosive, paranoid. He remembered Kili – I will not just stand by. He remembered saying you have changed, Thorin despite the danger and the anger in Thorin’s eyes. But now – so much had changed; so much and yet Bilbo could name none of it. What had happed? He still didn’t know. He did not know and now there was nothing he could do about it, because he couldn’t seem to hold onto anything long enough to work it out. He looked up and saw that Thorin had turned his head and fixed Kili with a look of contempt over his shoulder, and Bilbo flinched as if a blow had been dealt to him.  
“She,” Thorin said, full of venom as he slowly turned around, “is gone. She left you without a word or a sound and well for it. If it takes the end of the Age of Elves itself to bring you to your senses, then I welcome their destitution. And I’ll hear no more of it! It is over and you will accept it as such and you will remember that this is your home and that you have a duty here and here alone. Let your childish perversions be done with. You were a fool, Kili, to ever think otherwise, and I will not suffer fools in my Halls. Now be gone from my sight – I will expect you and your brother to be present at Breakfast; go wake him.”  
With that Thorin turned once more, stalked his way to his Throne and then sat down upon it, and Bilbo thought that despite his outburst and the richness of his clothes and the previous animation of his limbs, he was like a marble statue as he sat there; emotionless and cold.  
Kili turned away from the Throne in a blaze of repressed fury and quickly pounded away, but as he did so he discretely motioned for Bilbo to follow him. Once they were safely out of ear shot Kili turned to Bilbo and leaned in close to him.  
“I’ll come tonight, after dark,” he uttered, “No one will know; I will make sure I am not followed. I have to get to Fili.”  
And then without waiting for a reply he turned on his heal and made a dash for a north-facing door, disappearing through it towards stairs where, if Bilbo remembered correctly, he would eventually get to the Royal Quarters.  
Bilbo was left alone.  
For a short while, he tried to call Kili back: he felt very strongly the need to say something. But his calls were too quiet, little more than sounds and half-words in truth, and he saw no sign of Kili returning. Flustered, Bilbo gave up. He was surrounded by silence and thick shadows. How well he knew the silence of Erebor, by now. He was beginning to think it was his only real friend. Only the silence was always there; only the silence bore him witness; only the silence knew what he looked like when, confused, he would sometimes look around and not even recognise where he was.  
“Of course,” he said quietly after a while, pretending that Kili was still there, “When – whenever you are ready.”  
It was all he had wanted - to be just one small agreeable thing when all else was so strangely impossible - but even that was denied him.  
Bilbo looked at the stones and draperies and felt a draft. The only light on the wall, a small candle in a brass mount, was closing down upon its wick. The flame flickered unsteadily for a while and then went out. Bilbo sighed.  
~  
Kili came much later than promised. Bilbo had retired to his little rooms soon after breakfast and he’d spent the rest of the day there in fretful but absent thought. It was well after dark, Bilbo guessed, by the time Kili knocked on his door and hustled inside. The Raven Roäc was already at the window. Bilbo’s was the only one that the Guards had forgotten about; the only one that wasn’t watched. It was some time ago that Bilbo had realised that his window had been forgotten because he, too, mostly was.  
“I’m sorry,” the haste with which Kili had left Bilbo that morning was still with him, “I meant to get here sooner, really I did, but I have not been able to leave Fili….”  
Bilbo waved away Kili’s explanation and even offered him some tea, but Kili was already at the window, opening it inwards so that Roäc could hop inside. Kili lost no time in tying a curled leather pouch to Roäc’s leg, speaking to him softly in Khazdul before quickly sending him on his way. Then Kili closed the window gently, wary still of the dangers of letting down his guard, and he turned back into the room and leaned against the wall, sighing deeply. Looking over at Bilbo, he gave him a deeply sorrowful look.  
“Aulë bless you, Bilbo Baggins,” he said, “Of all my sins, those against you are the most unforgiveable.”  
Grief filled Bilbo’s heart and he sank down into an armchair. Kili’s sins, such as he called them, were only to be short of time enough for every need that required him, and those were many. By rights he shouldn’t be responsible for them at all; but who could count those grievances now? Bilbo felt that they had long passed beyond reckoning, his own among them.  
“My only regret,” he said quietly, struggling with the words for feeling them, “is that it should have come to this…..”  
And then, in the somewhat accidental privacy of rooms Bilbo never wished for but couldn’t quite escape, Kili crossed the floor, dropped to his knees, and hugged him.  
“Don’t give up hope,” he whispered, although he clung to Bilbo as if the last hope had just died, “We may yet….we may yet get through this.”  
Bilbo still wasn’t sure what this was, exactly, but the feeling of arms wrapped around him and the warmth of another person holding him tight reminded him of why they must hold out to hope, even now; because if one true hug could rally him even in a moment such as this, then surely there was something that could be done.....  
“Do you really think that she’s still out there?” he dared to ask. Kili clutched him harder.  
“I do," he answered earnestly, "I know that it may look like folly, to keep believing in the face of such unspeakable odds, but I cannot explain it, although I will defend it. I do not believe she would just abandon me. Nothing will convince me otherwise.”  
Bilbo nodded and tried not to think about how long he had left before he would have to relinquish this hug and go back to seclusion and absence. Instead he considered Kili's words and it seemed to him that before too long, the young Prince's hope would have to stand for them all. He had often wondered if in his great stone palaces the Dwarf Maker could hear a hobbits voice, but he now offered up a silent prayer that Kili's strength would not falter: it was all that Bilbo could do to help him.  
~  
My dearest T –  
Thorin says that you have abandoned these lands; that you have set sail in your ships and will never lay eyes on the shores of Middle Earth again. He has grown hard – realise I have said this before. But the coldness in him is palpable. He says that the Elves could not endure and he has removed the Western Watch, so beware those paths and do not stray unless you must. I fear many things, but mostly I fear that Watchfulness I sensed before; I feel it growing daily now, like a waiting beast. It is as if we still have Smaug here, pretending sleep under the vast gold, listening and calculating his move. Fili makes no improvement and this morning Balin left. I am quite alone.  
I will not ask you to contest Thorin’s claims. It has been a long time since you last answered my letters but make no mistake, I do not believe you are gone. I trust that you are well because you must be, or else everything I labour for is in vain. As long as I draw breath, I will not give up the hope of it. You know how I persist.  
Write, please write. Even a few hurried lines would now bring much peace to my troubled heart.  
As ever, I wait longingly.  
I miss you.  
I love you.  
Aulë and the Valour help us, what is happening to Middle Earth?  
I remain ever yours, constantly, faithfully  
K


	2. Nine

The gold shone.  
Bofur had been in the mines searching for a particular gemstone for a toy he was making, but he had delayed his stay there for the company and the songs and some not small quantities of ale, all thought of his craft forgotten. It was hours later before he emerged again and started to make his way back up to the surface with a full belly and a rather hazy head, passing pile after pile of the most dazzling, glittering gold that eye ever beheld, and as he went not once did he stop to wonder that it was all pushed up into shabby, thoughtless heaps against the corridor walls. Of course, Bofur already knew why: all of Erebor was aware that so great was their bounty that they hadn’t the room to properly store it. Thorin was constantly commissioning new halls. But they couldn’t build as quickly as they could mine, and so much of the gold that was dug up was simply left in such piles as the back passages of Erebor could hold. At first some of Erebor’s dwarves had called it unsightly; but now they all barely noticed, often walking past these hordes of gold as if they were nothing more than piles of old coats, and Bofur was only just aware that very few of them now considered this to be strange behaviour, for dwarves.  
As he skipped up the corridors and mine shafts, Bofur began to whistle. Before too long he was whistling a strange tune that he didn’t exactly know, but that he thought he might have heard before somewhere. It seemed to echo off the walls rather oddly. For some reason it didn’t worry him, although it was both odd and strange. He turned a corner and saw another dwarf, possibly a miner, in the distance in front of him. He was leaning against a wall and looking down at the ground. Bofur thought little of it and continued on his way, still whistling. Just as he was about to skip by him without comment, the other dwarf suddenly spoke, moving only his lips, and Bofur’s whistle dropped and he stopped, surprised. He hadn’t expected the other dwarf to notice him.  
“The gold….” The dwarf said and Bofur looked down at it, “The gold shines……but…..what light is it reflecting?”  
Bofur swayed a little as he looked around. The floor was littered with more sparkling riches than that of the night sky; shiny, shiny gold; gold that twinkled, gold that glowed, gold that was full of promise and that seemed so, so bright with all its shining.  
Was there something about that shining? Bofur tried to think about it for a moment; shiny, shiny, shiny gold…..then it came to him.  
“Pretty, isn’t it?” Bofur said with a goofy grin, looking up at the other dwarf once more. He didn’t recognise him….but perhaps he did….but surely not. The poor thing was muttering the gold shines over and over and somewhere in the back of his mind, Bofur did question if something shouldn’t be done about it.  
“Have you been stood here long?” he asked. The dwarf responded by turning his head towards him and Bofur saw that his eyes were grey and unfocused and that a cloudy film covered them, as if they had not blinked in a long while.  
“The gold, you see,” the dwarf said again, “It shines……it shines…..but what light is it reflecting? What light is it reflecting?”  
“I don’t know what you mean,” Bofur said, feeling suddenly uneasy and unwell. He looked up and down the corridor cautiously; nervous of being caught and accused of things he wasn’t yet aware of doing. His eyes had trouble focusing and he began to feel a peculiar fogginess in his mind as about him the corridor seemed almost to move. Silently, he wondered if he’d had too much to drink, but he hadn’t kept a count. That’s when his eyes flickered upward and he noticed - completely by accident – that there were no torches on the walls.  
Baffled, Bofur checked again. He struggled to make sense of timber and stone and iron, as the shapes around him moved or took the wrong form, but eventually he was sure enough: no torches, no candles, not even a lamp could be found. The only thing that kept the corridor from total darkness was the shine coming off the gold itself.  
“Huh,” Bofur said.  
Why hadn’t he noticed this before? Had it always been the case? If anyone had ever asked him, Bofur would have sworn that of course there were torches. For a brief, wavering moment he questioned if he hadn’t stumbled upon something important. It suddenly seemed to mean something - something vague but something crucial – but then just as he was beginning to question what that was, that strangle little tune that he had been whistling came back into his head again and he grinned. Turning back to the other dwarf, he said: “Terribly useful, that!”  
Whatever he had been trying to reach was gone, and the urgency and uneasiness and even its memory was gone with it. Bofur felt satisfied and he clapped the other dwarf on the arm and then skipped away, giving the whole thing no more thought.  
Before too long, he ran into Bombur.  
“Bombur!” he said and the two of them embraced.  
“Leaving the party?!” Bombur asked.  
“Off to another!” Bofur responded.  
They laughed, and as they did their laughter seemed to grow and stretch to an unnatural length and volume until eventually it just stopped, leaving them uncomfortable in the quiet that followed. Bofur’s throat was sore. He tried to think of something to say, but instead he found that he couldn’t look long at Bombur. It was almost as if his eyes were afraid of resting on his brother’s face, but he couldn’t tell why: they slipped away before he had chance to realise what it was that they didn’t like looking at.  
“Oh!” Bombur said suddenly and Bofur was glad that at last one of them had found something to say, “Thorin has called a meeting. After dinner this evening, in his private chambers. We’re all to be there.”  
“Sounds like a riot!” Bofur answered, feeling as if he were speaking despite himself.  
“Don’t you know it!” his brother answered back, and for a moment he looked as strange as Bofur felt.  
“Well – I’d best be getting onto the mines! There’s a particular pint with my name on it…..”  
Bombur hesitated; Bofur had been about to clap him on his way, but the peculiarly vexed look his brother shot him stayed his hand. Bombur leaned in close to Bofur and whispered:  
“Did……did we always drink in the mines, Bofur?”  
Bofur didn’t really like to think about it. There had been deaths – he couldn’t remember how many any longer.  
“Does it really matter now?” he whispered to his brother in return. Bombur nodded and looked grave.  
“See you at dinner!” He then said, changing so quickly from fear to joy it was like the wind changing course. Bofur blinked, trying to keep up and make sense of what was happening, but he couldn’t connect the pieces and by the time he came-to, Bombur was already halfway down the corridor.  
“Watch out,” Bofur called after him, remembering with some surprise the other dwarf, “a little down the way! One of them has…..stopped.”  
It happened, sometimes. Dwarves would be on their way along the halls, carrying out their business, and then suddenly and for no reason they would just stop and stand motionless. Sometimes they would stay like that - in corridors, at doors, by tables, on the stairs and practically anywhere - for hours at a time, sometimes longer. Sometimes they would mumble strange things, but often they said nothing at all and they didn’t seem to notice if someone walked up to them or called their name. Eventually, and with just as little warning, some of them would start walking again; but more often than not they just continued to stand where they had stopped and their bodies would slowly begin to shrink. Bofur was never really sure what happened to them after that - or what it was that had made them stop so strangely to begin with - but he always felt that someone somewhere did know and so he didn’t have to worry about it.  
He watched Bombur disappear around the bend and then he turned and carried on his way, whistling once again that strange, haunting tune.  
~  
The inner rooms of Thorin’s private chambers were a secluded and heavily guarded sanctum for Erebor’s King. Bofur could count the number of times he’d been permitted within them on one hand. They were a far cry from the splendour and grandiose of the public Halls and places; Thorin’s study - where Bofur and the others of the original Company had been called to gather - was simply and sparsely decorated with fur throws and rugs in dark colours, thick stone walls, tall-backed and undecorated chairs, a heavy wooden desk and thin little windows at the topmost corners. Its principle feature was a huge fireplace that ran the full length of the west wall and nearly the full height of the room, and on their perches ravens cawed, watching every rustle and movement with clockwork eyes.  
Bofur was not the first to arrive, but neither was he the last. Bombur and Gloin were there before him, gathered round the grand fireplace, and Bofur took a mug of ale from a side table and joined them. They were telling stories and laughing, but in a hushed, almost dampened way; Thorin was at his desk, quietly reading papers as they waited for the others to arrive. Once, Bofur might have been inclined to fetch a mug for him or even tempt him over for a story, but the company of the King had become a half-formed thing, like that of a phantom or a reflection in a mirror. Gone were the days when Thorin was remote but true – a solid, accessible, touchable being; sleeping next to them in his pouch in the wild; sharing their meals; fishing them out of barrels in rivers - but Bofur was hardly able to reflect on such a change. The little tune that played constantly in his head was now awash with a noise like running water, sloshing about between his ears.  
Before too long, Dori and Nori arrived and added to their number, raising their mugs and voices with the others. They made a distortedly merry group; their noses red, their eyes blurry and unfocused, their skin blotchy and their movements heavy and slow, and although somewhere vague within them all they knew, at the same time it seemed to have no meaning and so they had long since given it up. Still, Bofur often felt as if his thoughts, his true thoughts, were somehow outside of himself - just out of reach, as if behind a pane of glass - and that between them and him a deep cavern had been carved out in his mind across which there was now only the slosh-sloshing in his ears. Trying to get hold of them was like trying to catch rays from the sun. Bofur couldn’t even remember the last time he’d made an attempt, but what could he do against such mysteries? Nowadays he felt stuffed-up, as if he were made of nothing but hay, and he knew that, really, he was not fit for much else.  
Dwalin joined the company next, sliding in from a hidden door quiet and grim like a shadow sliding across a wall, and Bofur looked across at him. Dwalin was not as they were; his face was stern and he refused his mug and he did not join them at the fire, but instead hung back at the dark walls, his face turned to the floor.  
Last of all came Kili, and only then did Thorin raise his head. He looked at his nephew with dark eyes.  
“Fili?” Thorin asked, his voice rumbling across the room like the stirrings of an earthquake. The company fell silent. Kili shook his head and looked worried. Thorin put down his pen.  
“Very well.” He said and then stood up.  
That was their Que. The company rose as one and walked over to stand in front of Thorin’s desk, ready to be told why they had been summoned. Thorin had done this before. Had he any of his former self about him, Bofur might have realised that this, too, had changed: once Thorin had valued their council as those who had been loyal and brave enough to journey with him on his Quest, but now it was no more than a cheap way of lobbying their support against the Lords of Erebor for something that Thorin had already decided he was going to do. He made only a show of asking.  
The Company stood silently, their mugs set aside, and waited for Thorin to begin. Dwalin moved in from the shadowy walls. Kili looked on edge. No one mentioned Bifur’s absence. Poor, poor mad Bifur. When had Bofur last been to visit him? He couldn’t remember; he found the drawings and symbols his cousin wrote in calk along the walls and floors of his locked rooms too upsetting and could no longer stomach their sight, even if it removed them from each other altogether.  
“I have something to share with you all,” Thorin began and the dwarves blinked and shifted their weight, but still said nothing, “I have received a message – tell me what you make of it!”  
So saying, Thorin pulled a weather-worn and beaten looking strip of old paper from underneath the pile on his desk and thrust it with some theatrics at the Company. Kili took it from him. For a while he looked at the brown, curling paper in silence, feeling the roughness of the material with his thumb, and then he looked up, first at Thorin and then at the rest of them, and cleared his throat.  
“Hail Thorin, son of Thrain, son of Thor, King under the mountain – “ Kili spoke clearly, but Bofur leaned forward anyway and as he did he felt the others do so as well, crowding in around him as if they were all hard of hearing and having trouble following one word after another against the sloshing in their ears. Kili continued.

“Please forgive the absence of proper greetings – I write under the most desperate of circumstances on such paper as I can find. Indeed all formality and propriety that once was is now lost to us, and we can but scramble quick notes in the dark and hope that they may not find their end in vain.  
I beg you will overlook this rudeness, and hearken to our voice.  
Rohan is lost. Some would say it was a slow decay, but in the end the violence was just as swift and unexpected as the thief in the night. Those of us who managed to escape the worst have fled into the wilderness, where we wander now giving chase from Orc and Warg like wolves set upon shepardless sheep. Many evil things you may have heard of our people, but I beg you now not to give ear to it! The danger is greater than one land, one race, and soon what has passed between us and the Black Gate will be the fortunes of all.  
There is only one thing now that can be done. We do not ask for aid. So few, so few are there now left in the light – if we do not come together, darkness will surely cover all lands.  
I ask that you meet with us – my brother and I – that we may discuss these things and come to terms.  
Remember your own plight! Not of old but that which will soon be, and agree before it is too late!  
A last alliance is Middle Earth’s only hope.  
Forgive the strangeness of this letter: worse things now crawl the earth and block out the sun, and we can but speak plainly in riddles.  
Yours,  
The Lady Éowyn, Sheildmaiden of Rohan, and her brother, Captain Eomer of the Rohirrim, kin to he who was once Théoden, King of Rohan.  
That’s it…..that’s all it says.”

Silence stirred in the room. Kili put the letter down on Thorin’s desk like an evil thing he wished to be rid of. A raven cawed and fluttered its black wings and a candle went out. Thorin looked at them each in turn; what for, Bofur couldn’t tell. Perhaps he was testing them – testing their knowledge, their understanding. Testing to see what they made of Rohan and Rohan’s lady’s plea. Of course, they could make little of it -stuffed with hay and sloshing as they were - and Bofur looked away to the floor.  
“Well?” Thorin’s voice was like a hammer, but his tone gave away nothing of his mind, “What do you make of this…….message? Should we agree to meet this Captain of the Rohirrim, and the sister who writes for him?”  
The company was silent. After a few seconds they began to look sideways at each other and to cough and mumble, but no one dared to speak first. Who could tell what answer Thorin sought? Or how best they could please him in speaking? Bofur had neither the courage nor heart to, but luckily chance passed him by. Gloin cracked first under the silence. He held out a hand to lean uncomfortably onto Thorin’s desk – for posture or because his balance had gone and his legs had become weak, Bofur couldn’t tell – and he glanced up uncertainly at Thorin.  
“Well………I think little of their manners, to begin.”  
As soon as he had spoken, the whole Company sagged with relief. Thorin huffed.  
“How true, my friend.” He answered, and the Company was further relived.  
“But tell me, what do you know of Rohan?” Thorin continued, “Are they to be trusted?”  
“The men of Rohan and Gondor are honourable men – for men.” Kili spoke up, his cheeks just slightly colouring. Bofur looked at him kindly. He was pleased to hear some of Kili’s former outspokenness; since the business with Fili, Kili had had to learn the measure of his words and so often now he seemed hesitant, like a pup too often put in his place.  
“Perhaps, once.” Was all that Thorin would say, but it was enough for the Company.  
“I…wouldn’t be too quick to trust them.” Gloin ventured, gathering courage at his success so far.  
“Indeed, these days caution can never be amiss,” Thorin turned from them ever so slightly to take the paper and burry it again within his desk. No one noticed exactly where it went.  
“It may surprise you,” he continued, “to learn that silently and cunningly, Rohan have been supplying gifts of their best horses to Mordor.”  
The Company uttered their surprise.  
“They pay tribute?” Bombur asked. In front of him, Dwalin nodded and then they all knew it was true; Dwalin would have seen it with his own eyes.  
“Well then that does it!” Gloin cried out, “They are in league with Mordor! They seek to pull us into a trap!”  
“Do you think so, Gloin?” Thorin turned the whole gaze of his eyes on Gloin and even Bofur shuddered, though he was thankful that it was not him.  
Gloin said nothing, but looked away fearfully to the ground as if the gaze of his King was a thing intolerable.  
“The lady’s message could be true,” Kili swiftly interjected, drawing Thorin’s gaze away from Gloin, “If they paid a tax of horses then they could well be under Mordor’s command by now; but some of them would have resisted. They would have fled and sent us warning.”  
“So you would meet them, then?” Thorin now turned on Kili and his eyes wore into him like flames, “You would heed their call?”  
Kili wavered, but he was resolute. Bofur could hardly believe it. Even with the slosh-sloshing and the fogginess that blurred everything, he was able to marvel at this little stand of Kili’s, although he didn’t fully understand it.  
“Yes,” Kili said, “I would.”  
Thorin studied him for a while, although Bofur couldn’t tell for how long. Strange shadows seemed to cross the walls behind Thorin, like insects crawling, but Bofur wasn’t sure if he could trust his eyes. Then Thorin huffed again and he smiled, although it was little more than a curling of his lip.  
“It is just as well then that I sent out scouts and verified their story,” he said, “They are indeed fled and living in the wild.”  
“So you mean to meet with them?” Bofur couldn’t help but ask, although he coloured at the sound of his voice.  
“Do you think it wise?” Thorin asked.  
“Well. Perhaps we could name some place in the wild, meet them and then see what they have to say. If they are in league with Mordor, then we can just kill them and be on our way.”  
Bofur heard his words fall into the air in the room, but he didn’t recognise them. They dropped like stones and he could almost feel them crashing into the floor. Why had he said that? If he’d had a reason, it was already misplaced. Thorin fixed him with a strange look as around him all the ravens fell into silence and cocked their heads.  
“Yes, I will meet them,” Thorin’s voice slowly boomed out into the otherwise silent room, “But not in the wild. No. Bring them here; let them see our strength and our wealth, and if it turns out that they had indeed meant to trap us then yes, Bofur, we will kill them. We will lay waste to them for trying to snare us!”  
The Company cheered as they knew they were meant to, but it was a hollow sound and it seemed to act on its own, without their mouths or even the air in their lungs. Bofur felt a deep dread settle within him. What had he done? He hadn’t meant to….surely, he hadn’t meant to! Surely they would know that! He looked among them, his friends and brothers of old, but of them only Kili was silent, looking gravely at the floor. Bofur felt for him – but knew that his silence would not pass unnoticed. Thorin soon fixed him a withering look.  
“You will see,” he said darkly, addressing his nephew, “You will see.”  
~

“Hail Thorin, son of Thrain.”  
Thorin did not rise. He fixed Captain Eomer with a smug look and flicked the fingers of one hand at him. The Lord and Lady of Rohan rose from their low bows in perfect symmetry. Though their faces were partly hidden under their low hoods, Bofur could see that they did not waver and he wondered how they could be so still with so many eyes watching: what could they possibly fear that was worse than all the spears of Erebor?  
“Exiles of Rohan,” Thorin began, his tongue sharp as any blade, “I must confess that your letter has troubled me.”  
“Then it has served its purpose well,” the Captain answered, “for the time has come when all peoples who would call themselves free should be troubled.”  
“Oh, perhaps,” Thorin spoke strangely, as if to himself or to some other thing that was close by, and he glanced over his shoulder. Turning his eyes back to the Rohan Captain once more, he continued.  
“Or perhaps, only those who are found wanting; who are not prepared.”  
A flash of something quick and knowing crossed the Captain’s eye and he turned his head slightly.  
“There is no preparing for what is about to break out across this land; unless it was done years ago.”  
“First tell me of your own doom, before you judge mine.” Thorin said, tossing his head.  
Bofur was confused. He had lost the thread of the conversation and didn’t really understand what was up for dispute. Standing on the Royal Platform on Thorin’s left, along with what remained of the Old Company, he had one of the best positions in the hall for hearing and seeing, but it couldn’t help him connect the pieces in his head. He understood, however, that they were about to learn of what happened to Rohan and so he made an effort to listen more attentively, although he was sweating in his heavy armour worse than if he were under the mid-day sun.  
The Lady of Rohan lifted up her head. She had cool eyes, like an untendered spring, and she fixed Thorin with a sturdy gaze before she began to speak.  
“The seize was a month ago to this day,” her voice was neither soft nor harsh but balanced, like a faithful mountain stream that saw much but passed no comment, “They came across the Enedwaith. We had been watching the South for so long; we could not have guessed that there would be two towers to fear. But my brother will talk of that later.  
Where the tale of our downfall truly begins, it is hard to say. For many long years we have had problems; orcs crossing the Riddermark; spies slipping our nets. But it was over the last year that the trouble really began to escalate. It became apparent that orcs were passing through our lands unchecked. We sent out guards, warriors, patrols; what became of them we still do not know. They vanished, as if they never were. News was slow to reach us at Edoras and by the time we learned of the disappearance of one company or another, the orcs had already burned many villages, plundered much livestock and passed on to where we could not follow. Then came the wild men, laying their hands on what the orcs had left behind, murdering and thieving. We had no warning. Between the men and the orcs our crops failed and our supplies were wasted and it became perilous to travel abroad for aid. We tried sending out messengers, but they were slain or, like the others before them, they simply disappeared. We realised then that we were caught in a trap – that for years, possibly, forces had been working to cut us off from the outside world to leave us deaf and blind and dumb and starving, so that our cause would be desperate. But by the time we realised this, there was nothing we could do; the dust had fallen from our eyes too late. Little by little we dwindled, losing many until there were hardly any of us left. When they finally came and held our city at seize their demands were simple; serve them or die. We chose death, and many of us did die; but as we were driven from cot and roof some of us managed to escape and we took refuge in the wilderness.”  
“But where was your King?” Thorin asked quickly and curiously, “Where was the leadership of Théoden, your uncle?”  
Bofur saw a deep flush of sadness darken the Lady of Rohan’s face and the line of her jaw became hard as if she swallowed back against some private pain. When she spoke again she looked at the floor and her voice did not tremble, but was quieter.  
“As I said, we cannot tell when this doom did truly first come upon us. Théoden was……ill. He is still ill. That he is alive is small mercy, for those who love him still. Even against the pain of my own love, I would say he were better off dead.” Her eyes became hard and she looked up from the floor and stared directly at Thorin, “The sickness….this sickness of a King…..began small, as all evil things do. But evil things that go unchecked grow, given enough time. Théoden became surrounded by counsellors of ill-tongue and ill-intent, feeding him toxic words that slowly poisoned his mind until he did not know himself, nor his own kin. We came to him, we begged him. But his mind was lost. We did what we could, but those who spoke against his dark advisers were banished, or worse. By the time Edoras was held at seize, Théoden was little more than a puppet.”  
A slight mummer rippled through the Hall, but it was brief. Thorin had commanded all of Erebor to be present but silent; a glittering, richly dressed, heavily armed mass to surround the two Rohirrim so that wherever they looked they would be face-to-face with Erebor’s power and strength, but not to react or show their ignorance. The news of Rohan’s King was deeply troubling for Erebor’s people, but it was more than the value of their lives to disobey the orders of their own. Out of the corner of his eye, Bofur caught the glint of anger that lit up Thorin’s otherwise stoic face. The proposed puppeteering of Théoden was no small threat to him. He leaned forward on his Throne, bending heavily over his arms as the shine of the Arkenstone struck his crown and flashed like a warning beacon, and bared his teeth at the Lady of Rohan.  
“What is this you say?” he said tautly, “Do you speak of witchcraft and sorcery? You fools! Does it not occur to you that Théoden was weak, that he surrendered without fight?”  
The two Rohirrim let the insult pass. Perhaps they were more aware of the eyes of Erebor and the swords they carried than Bofur had previously thought.  
“If you had seen him, you could not doubt that it was sorcery.” The Captain said firmly, “A spell was cast that aged and dulled him beyond recognition. Men from our own council betrayed their King to help maintain it for rewards that were not theirs to have or their new masters to give. The seize on Edoras is proof enough. The orcs that held the city captive were not orcs like any that have been seen before; they were Uruk-Hai, a breed of orc crossed with elf, a huge and cruel race that feel no pain and that can walk in sunlight. Who do you think could produce such beasts? Not Mordor, for my sister has already told you that they did not come from the South but from across the Enedwaith; from Isengard. The Uruks’ armour bore the mark of a white hand. While we were watching the South, expectant of battle ever since the days had begun to grow darker, a more unexpected enemy rose up unlooked for out of the West. It was the white hand of Saruman that toppled Rohan.”  
The Captain’s voice died off and a thick silence took its place. The brother and sister glanced briefly at each other and then out into the crowding faces of Erebor’s people. Bofur could hardly guess what they expected; but then they did not know Thorin. They could not know how it faired in Erebor; how even the very walls of stone sometimes were and sometimes were not.  
Thorin leaned to one side and scrutinised the Rohirrim’s faces, his chin resting on the fingers of his closed fist. The silence wrapped around them all like a cloak of ice. Exactly how long it lasted Bofur could not tell, but not one of their people moved or made a single noise, and the Captain and his sister grew increasingly more uncomfortable. Eventually Thorin stirred. He leaned back into his Throne and lifted up his head.  
“You have brought very serious accusations to the foot of my Throne,” He said, deep and quiet like the mountain itself, “A new race of Orc; a White Wizard who has turned to darkness, casting spells on Kings and seizing their lands. Saruman is the head of the White Council, who cast Sauron out in the last Great War. Tell me; what do you want from me?”  
The Rohirrim looked surprised. Bofur guessed that they had expected a different question; to prove their claim, perhaps. They shared another swift glance and then the Captain spoke once more.  
“When the Uruks attacked we were driven North, but it is our wish to travel South again. We mean to go to Gondor and deliver this news to them and then join them, to make such a stand against the evil of both Mordor and Isengard as we can; for Sauron and Saruman will seek to rule all of Middle Earth between them, and the land will run red with bloodshed and the rule of the Orc will be upon us. But we cannot travel South such as we are. It is a perilous journey, and we are few and we have little by the way of food or horse. We ask you, Thorin of Erebor, to aid us in this quest. Send some of your warriors with us. Your people share this earth and are bound to its fate as we are; should the South fail the Eye of Mordor will turn next to the Lonely Mountain and then it will be your lands and your people that will be taken.”  
Bofur realised that he was holding his breath. The Captain spoke with great urgency and conviction and Bofur could easily imagine the scene; a messenger at the door; a scout sent back with a black arrow through his head, dragged by his terrified pony; a doom that couldn’t be refused and a fire that couldn’t be put out. At the opposite end of the Platform he saw Bilbo looking keenly in Thorin’s direction, his large hobbit eyes desperately seeking him out with a pleading expression. The Hall was deathly tense. Only Thorin seemed unshaken and unmoved. He put his right hand into the pocket of his rich furs and there seemed to caress something with his fingers.  
“You want me to send warriors with you to Gondor,” he said slowly and the look he gave to the Lord and Lady reminded Bofur of the look he gave to the Company in his study not two weeks back; both sly and dangerous.  
“To Gondor?” he repeated.  
“Yes.” The Captain answered and for the first time he began to look anxious.  
“Interesting….” Thorin continued to play with whatever it was that he had in his pocket, “Why should I trust you? Reports of your people paying a tax of horses to Mordor are common knowledge; and now here you are, asking me to come to Gondor…..”  
“Those reports are a lie!” the Lady of Rohan said quickly and keenly, “Those horses were stolen from us. Saruman has worked hard to sully our reputation.”  
Thorin shrugged off her defence indifferently.  
“And yet do we agree on this one thing; that you want me – or if not me, then a good portion of my warriors – to go with you to Gondor?”  
The Lord and Lady of Rohan crossed their brows and a streak of fear broke out across their faces. Bofur guessed that they were beginning to think themselves the victims of a second trap, and he thought that they were probably not wrong.  
“Yes.” The Captain said, sounding strange reluctant: but how could he deny it now? Thorin had been careful to press him, and now he fixed him with a cruel eye.  
“Then surely you must not know…..for surely you do not mean to draw me into a trap? Surely you escaped Rohan’s peril in the way you have described - and have not become servants of the Enemy for the price of your lives, sent here to draw out my forces, to remove my people from where they are safe and secure and strong, and to launch the beginning of the end of us all as the first falling stones of an avalanche! Do you deny it?!”  
The faces of the Lord and Lady fell with shock and what little colour they had left in them drained away. Thorin stood up and towered above them high on the stairs of his Throne. Withdrawing his hand from his pocket, he flung at them what he had held in his fingers.  
“Here is the ring of the steward of Gondor!” he cried in a loud and thunderous voice, “Taken from the severed hand that was delivered to me by Crebain not two weeks before you claim your city was held at seize!”  
A ring fell and bounced several times on the hard marble of the Platform before stopping at the feet of the Lady of Rohan. She bent slowly and picked it up.  
“At long last Gondor’s cry for a King has been answered; nine old Kings of men have been returned to them,” Thorin continued, proclaiming loudly to the whole Hall, “They have relieved the weary steward of his duty and the greatest of them has taken up command once more. Nine Old Kings. Perhaps you know of them; they have nine rings.”  
The Lady of Rohan studied the steward’s ring and then passed it over to her brother. Bofur could almost feel the dread that settled over the two of them; they suddenly looked ill beyond the hunger of near starvation, as if the very air in their lungs has been stolen.  
“Gondor is now under the rule and command of he who brought back the Kings of Old. Gondor belongs to Mordor. And you two – you would have led us there, full of false woes and in promise of false glory, like lambs led to the slaughter! Do you deny it?!”  
The Captain took the ring from his sister with one hand and then with the other he held onto her arm. He studied the ring a short while and then turned eyes filled with grief and deep terror up at Thorin.  
“We did not know,” he said, just louder than a whisper, “I swear it…..”  
Thorin scowled at him.  
“Get out of my Halls!” he cried, waving a hand through the air at them “The race of Men is finished! You were not strong; you were not prepared. Weakness runs through the hearts of all men like lava from the deep rock. Go back to the wilderness, or run begging for mercy to your new master, the Nazgûl, if you think he will have better use of you as slaves and heavy labourers than the orcs will of sport.”  
It was then that Bofur saw a strange thing happen. Fili was sitting at Thorin’s right hand on a curious little seat that was something like a stool with arms. Bofur did not know if he had asked for it or if he were being made to sit, but sitting he was with his head bent slightly forwards so that his hood cast a dark shadow across his face and the only parts of him that could be seen were his pale, almost grey hands and their long, leathery fingers. He had been silent throughout the meeting, but at the mention of the word Nazgûl he let out a long, gurgling moan, as if he were gasping for air with water on his lungs. Kili’s hand was on his arm in an instant and the noise stopped; but it must have been quieter than Bofur though, for the Lord and Lady of Rohan had not heard it. They had exchanged quick glances and the Captain was now pulling on his sister’s arm.  
“Let’s go, Éowyn.” He whispered urgently at her, but a hot pinkness had suddenly flushed into the Rohan Lady’s cheeks. With surprising daring she lifted up her head and threw the stewards ring back at Thorin with force. The clang of silver hitting stone echoed far louder across the hall than it should have.  
“You are a fool, Thorin.” She said through gritted teeth even as tears sprung into her eyes and her brother gripped her arm harder and tried to pull her away.  
“Éowyn stop, we must go!” he whispered sharply at her, but she pulled against him and looked hard into Thorin’s face.  
“It will not end with us!” she cried out, “the Dark Lord will not be satisfied until he has all Middle Earth under his dominion!”  
Her brother snaked an arm around her waist and tried to gently drag her backwards, but she would not be deterred.  
“He will come for you! There is no bargaining with him; no promise he can make you that he will keep. You are passing blindly into your doom! Heed my warning; it will not stop with us! It will not stop with the race of Men! A storm is coming that will claim all your lives!”  
Her brother lifted her off the ground and carried her back a few paces just as Thorin sprang forward a step. For a moment it looked as if he would pursue them, but then he stood back and growled.  
“Get out of my sight!” he snapped, “And go quickly; before I change my mind and have your heads cut from your necks even as you are running.”  
The Captain dropped his sister to the floor and then they both turned and fled.  
Erebor remained silent. Lost in their own thoughts, they listened to the sounds of the two Rohirrim running away. Bofur could hardly tell what to make of it all, but he felt desperately sad. He did not often think of the outside world, but it suddenly seemed a very lonely place; no Elves and now no Men. Dale had ceased to be occupied for a long, long while, and Bofur could not remember when it was that he had seen the last of them disappear over the far hills in search of the rest of their kin. But Erebor could not truly be all that was left; it would be a very lonely mountain indeed, if it were.  
Bofur saw Kili and Bilbo exchange careful, anxious glances and then when the guards had finally signalled that the two Rohirrim were gone, Bofur watched as Kili turned hesitantly to Thorin.  
“Uncle,” he began quietly and his voice trembled and his eyes shone with the threat of tears, “they are destitute. They could not have known about Gondor – our own scouts confirmed their story. Please don’t send them away.”  
Thorin gave Kili a look of dark thoughtfulness as he turned and took to his Throne again.  
“What would you have me do?” he asked his nephew with surprising calm, “I cannot separate them from their fate. All that we have here, it is precious and hard won. I cannot build a home for you and keep you safe if I am also to fill it with all the desperate souls that walk this earth who were not as fortunate with their Kings as you are.”  
Kili’s face flooded with a deep hurt and he closed his eyes and turned his head down to the ground. Bofur wondered at him; had he been so long without kindness or care that now a few gentle words could hurt him more than a blow to the head?  
“But what if they are right?” Kili asked tentatively from behind his closed eyes before opening them slowly, “What if Saruman comes for us, or Sauron?”  
Thorin let out a strange laugh.  
“Do you think you speak to a fool?” he asked with a discordant ring of merriment to his voice, “Do not doubt me – let none of you doubt me! If Rohan’s Lord and Lady meant well now, it is only because they do not yet properly understand the full peril of their position. Soon enough they would have betrayed us to Mordor or Isengard; whichever came first. A great power protects Erebor - I have saved you all from terrible danger!”  
The people of Erebor took up the cry; saved! Saved from terrible danger! They clapped and raised their axes and spears and called out Thorin’s name and Bofur raised his voice as one of them, but in his heart he could not deny that it felt like a black joy, although he didn’t understand it.  
When the noise finally died down, Thorin turned to Kili once more.  
“Be at peace, nephew,” he said and a dark light flashed in his eyes “they will not come for us. They will not come for us!”


	3. seven

It had come to him.

From out of the ashes of dragon fire, from all that had been forgotten. From that which had been lost and from all that could be regained; it had come to _him_ , greater than the others and older and unlooked for. No one knew. No one could ever know, because they had all forgotten. How perfect it was; how comely its form; how beautiful its shine and its power. How hot it glowed against his skin. It was his true inheritance; his father’s, father’s, father’s; his first fathers. And he would not let it go. He would not be parted with it. It was precious to him.

Funny, how they all thought it was the Arkenstone. Thorin could laugh.

Such a small thing. Such a little thing. Had any of them even noticed it?

Would they notice it now?

“All is quiet, sire. There is not much news from the Iron Hills.”

Dain did not prosper so well. How could he? He had not been clever as Thorin had; he had not been foresighted as Thorin had; he had not been approachable as Thorin had, and now he was not profited as Thorin was. But what could Thorin do for Dain? Fortune was for the bold; the opportunist.

“Very well,” he said, but the old guard lingered. Thorin gave him a curious look.

“Is there more?” he asked.

The guard, Deloth, looked troubled under his too-large helmet.

“No, sire.” He said, his voice unsteady “Only…..that it is _very quiet_.”

“Of course it is quiet. There is no one left.”

Simple things elude even simple folk – Thorin sometimes forgets this. Over the years they had become only simpler; it was fortunate, then, that he had little cause to rely on them. He required only his inheritance. It was all that was necessary, all that could be trusted, all that consumed. Its power was greater than he could have ever hoped for.

The old guard bowed his head and left the room. Thorin huffed; let him go, let him slink away, grey beard dusting the floor! What was it to him – what they may say, what they may think? Their minds were dulled. They did not know. Thorin would never tell. Even now as they looked around them, wide eyed and pricked eared hoping for signs of life, they did not know that talk of dividing the South between Isengard and Mordor was turning sour and that the two orc-packs were becoming restless. But Thorin knew. Thorin had his eye on them. Soon there would be no Sauron and Saruman; soon it would be a question of _or_. Then they would laugh! Then the spoils would be ripe! Perhaps then something could be done for Dain. Thorin stroked his beard as he thought about it. It would not do to forget kin….not wholly. What was the odd bit of gold or the food from an orc-camp to his hoard and his inheritance? Maybe, then. Thorin reached for a pen and made a note to return to the issue of Dain after a victor had emerged from the South. He folded it and placed it into an envelope, and then taking a key from a chain around his neck, he opened a secret draw in his desk and placed it there amongst other papers. Then he sat back and thought for a while.

He was eventually disturbed by the distant sound of banging and a crash like a staircase collapsing. Thorin flung out of his chair, furious at the intrusion of his peace: the dwarves of Erebor should know better! Throwing open the doors to his study, he stepped heavily out into the corridor, his boots thudding. There was no one there. The doors slammed shut behind him and he heard another crash. Growling, Thorin sprang off in search of it.

He passed swiftly down dark corridors, meeting no one but not aware of it. If there were strange shapes in the shadows or the lick of flame on the walls, Thorin did not see them. His mind was of one thought – the insolence! Did they not know how he worked? Did they not know how he laboured? How sharp noises grated on his nerves, how the din of their activities distracted from his greater purposes? He ruminated tirelessly, ceaselessly for Erebor – could not Erebor keep quiet for _him_?! With furious footsteps Thorin turned corners and descended staircases, following the racket deep into the rear caves of the city. Some of the walls and pillars he passed were shrouded in a darkness that seemed thick and heavy, like spilled oil. They prickled at the edge of Thorin’s curiosity; he made a mental note to speak to Dwalin.

As he followed them, the noises grew steadily more terrible. Shouts became distinguishable from the sound of stones breaking: shouts that were icy and crazed and fearful and mad. The corridors were in disarray and littered with rubble, and he could hear the sound of drums beating in the deep. His forehead lined with sweat; it was getting hotter. It was familiar somehow, like an old memory stirring, but Thorin hadn’t the patience for lost memories, not now that he had regained his once-forgotten inheritance, and he shrugged it off resentfully. What more could the past have to offer him? There was nothing more; only his inheritance.

He came at last to a thick bridge that crossed over the top of a vast hall. The noises he pursued were coming from the depths beneath it. Thorin vaguely remembered this hall; it once had a grand purpose, although he couldn’t remember what. Its walls had been decorated in blue and silver and gold. But it was no more now than a deathly pit of unknown depth cutting deep into the darkest and oldest part of the mountain, and its walls were broken beyond recognition and covered with a thick, black smoke. If he hadn’t known better, Thorin might have questioned if a dragon wasn’t still living below….but he was no fool. He stepped out onto the foot of the bridge and felt heat blister up from beneath his boot. The walls flickered orange and green. Cries of maniacal laughter travelled up from the deep on a peculiar wind. Thorin looked down at the bridge and at the strange light that lapped at its sides. He had forgotten his anger. Instead, he found that he was strangely drawn to the depths. Something was down there; something that called to his curiosity. Suddenly, he felt a desperate urge to look over the edge and _see_. And what would he see? Perhaps something that would thrill him, perhaps something that would add to his power, perhaps something that could improve upon the infuriating inadequacy of Erebor’s dwarves, if only for a moment! Thorin hovered close to the edge, just a footstep away. His body flooded with sudden weight and he tipped forward from his ring-finger like an anchor. His face tilted across the brink. What was in that light below?! That terrifying, green-blazing light?! The cries from the depth grew louder, more desperate and more frantic, and his skin crawled and he shuddered and it was both ecstasy and torment. Thorin drew a snatched breath. He could feel the plunge coming…..

“Noooooooooo!”

Suddenly a body slammed into him and he felt strong, desperate arms encircle his waist. Someone was pulling him back from the brink, back along the bridge. The arms struggled. Thorin’s body was a heavy weight to lug and he found that his limbs were dulled, but through perseverance and with great exertion the arms managed to pull him out of the hall and into the cool darkness of the corridor leading up to it. Then they dropped him and Thorin sank against the wall. He could hear heavy panting coming from across the way. Eventually the glare of the strange green light dimmed from his eyes and Thorin blinked and began to see clearly again. Kili was across from him, resting on his shoulder against the opposite wall and looking up at him with deathly fear in his eyes.

“Uncle,” he said anxiously between gasps for breath, “What are you doing here? It isn’t safe.”

Hot fury immediately flushed through Thorin. Whatever strangeness was about them both, whatever it was that Kili had just pulled him from, Thorin could not focus on it; it was lost to the temper that lit up his veins like dragon fire.

“What did you say, insolent boy?!” he growled, “Not safe? Where in _my own city_ should I fear to go?”

Kili gave him a frustrated look, but then he dropped to the floor and started to pick up small loaves of bread that were scattered there, placing them into a basket that he must have dropped, Thorin guessed, when he had cried out.

“This part of the city is safe for no one” he mumbled quietly, busying himself with his task “You ordered it. ‘Put them in the deep’, you said, ‘where no one can hear their screaming’”

Thorin slowly raised himself upright using the wall for support. His weight fought against him. He rested one large, paw-like hand on the wall and leaned into it, staring at Kili as if he were speaking in riddles. The order sounded familiar; he had given it a long time ago, although little could he remember of it now. He grimaced and glanced back briefly at the bridge that led into the hall. What had he banished there?

“They pull you into the pit, if you get too close,” Kili continued from where he was squatting on the floor sill picking up bread, “We had to close off the west wing and some of the back store rooms too. There are too many of them.”

This only irritated Thorin further; that there were things going on within his kingdom without his explicit order, that he should have to be _informed_ of them, was maddening. Heads should roll for it – but Thorin was not a rash King. He knew the importance of appearances. Dwalin would answer for what was going on in secret; he would know who was responsible.

“Of course there are,” Thorin growled impatiently at Kili, “Do you not think I know?”

Kili looked up at him with wide, shocked eyes. Thorin saw that they were very shrunken and lined with deep-set dark circles.

“No one has seen you in………I don’t know, weeks? Maybe even months? I can’t tell any more….” Kili whispered.

For the first time in a long while, Thorin felt a spark of fear. What did Kili mean, no one had seen him? But then….Thorin was one of the only dwarves left in Erebor who could still accurately keep time; maybe the boy was confused; maybe they all were. Thorin could believe it of them. They had been so quick to lose their heads when the darkness had first come and they were so easily affected by it – as if a dwarf ever needed much sunlight! They were weak, all of them. They were just making things worse for themselves.

“Trouble me not with your confused speech!” he yelled at Kili sharply, “What fault is it of mine if you try to count when I have forewarned you not to? You keep a false reckoning; only moments ago I was receiving reports from Deloth in my rooms, before the noise of this rabble disturbed me.”

Kili rose very slowly with his basket in his hand. The darkness of the corridor obscured his face slightly, but Thorin could see that there was much doubt and fear in Kili’s eyes.

“Thorin,” he said slowly and with careful emphasis, “Deloth is one of them. He’s down there!” he pointed to the hall where Thorin could once again see the sickly glow of green light, “He’s been there for a whole moon, or maybe even two!”

Fear kindled within Thorin once more, only this time he began to doubt himself. How long ago had he been speaking to Deloth? Surely it was within hours. Surely it could be no more. A sudden flush of memory roused his senses and Thorin remembered his _grandfather_. Thror had done it, hadn’t he? Hours, days, weeks spent wasting away in his treasury, counting his coins, sometimes just looking at them. Thorin remembered being sent to try and rouse him – for his duties as King, for his family, even for food. He remembered the look in his grandfather’s eye; that cold, closed-off, hungry look. Could it be possible? Was his grandfather’s sickness growing on him? But Thorin had no obsession for gold. He barely visited the store-rooms, content to just know that they were there and that they were many. It was more likely that he had little rats running through his halls - spying, speaking poisonous words and plotting poisonous plots - than it was that he was succumbing to his grandfathers illness. Thieves and trouble makers – and maybe even usurpers? What was really afoot with Kili? Could he know? Had he learned somehow about the inheritance? _Did he want it for himself?_ Yes – Thorin was almost certain, and Dwalin would help him confirm the rest.

Thorin pushed himself off the wall and stood tall and heavy over Kili. He fixed him with a dark expression and bared his teeth.

“Tell me then, as you claim to know so much, my own _sister-son_ ,” he growled, “If it is not safe, then _what are you doing here_?”

Kili looked down at the basket of bread in his hand. After a few seconds he closed his fist tighter around the handle. When he looked back up at Thorin his face was unwavering.

“The best I can.” He said.

Thorin gave him a loathsome look and then turned brutishly away from him and started to head back up into the main part of the city. His mind was bent to one thing and one thing only – not the plight of his nephew or the news he had delivered – but of the head of his personal guard and chief of his extensive spy network: Dwalin son of Fundin.

Where had the bastard _been_?

He would answer for what had been going on in the halls while Thorin’s attention had been needed elsewhere. Thorin would not have plots unfolding – he would not have his authority challenged! He alone held the heart of Erebor; he alone controlled its fate; he alone protected its walls. He would throw them all outside of those walls, if they dared to oppose him! The power had come to _him_. It was his own! Only he could claim it! Only he could use it! None would take it from him! He would not just hand it over as his father had….

Dwalin’s rooms were high up in the top levels of the city, but Thorin hardly noticed the climb nor saw much of what he passed, so furious were his footsteps and his mind. By the time he reached the doors to Dwalin’s rooms he had worked himself into such frenzy that he mistook a shadow on the wall for a guard poised with a spear and he roared and flung himself at it. It was only after his fist connected with stone and the wall shook and loosed bits of plaster that fell about him like ash from a fire that Thorin realised he had jumped at a shadow, seeing assassins where there were none. His hand was cut and bleeding. Thorin shook red drops from his fingers. He turned around from the wall and faced Dwalin’s doors.

“Open up, Dwalin son of Fundin!” he called out. When there was no response he stepped forward and hammered on the door.

“Open these doors or I shall take them from you and force you to live your life in the open!”

Only the silence stirred around him. Thorin began to feel for the first time that it was unnatural; where _were_ Erebor’s citizens? His hand was starting to throb. Blood trickled down the lines of his fingers. He tried the handle on the door and was surprised to find that it was not locked. He swung it open. The room behind it was shrouded in darkness, save for the dim orange light of a fire. Thorin stepped slowly inside.

He saw first that the bed was unslept in: upon the green sheets was a thin layer of dust. Indeed the whole room was heavy with dust; the sleepy, undisturbed dust of places where no one wishes to go. Upon a desk a tray of un-eaten food was spoiled and flies swarmed over it. A fire was blazing in the fire-place. The smell of mould and smoked stone was in the air and sitting in a chair in the corner of the room, just beyond the light of the fire, was Dwalin.

Thorin walked over to him slowly. The fearful reverence of the room had quailed his temper somewhat; he felt that if he were to shout, the whole place would tumble down. Dwalin didn’t move, not even to lift his head. He was looking at the floor, his eyes a mournful stare as if he were listening to one of the great tales of old; of Azanulbizar  or Moria or other sad, dark chapters of their history. For a moment Thorin was moved – but he had not forgotten what he had come for. Erebor was bigger than any personal grief - whatever it may be. Erebor was foremost of all things, and none were exempt from their duty to their city.

“You have been absent of late, my old friend,” Thorin said coming to stand in front of Dwalin by the fireplace, “Why do you keep to your rooms? There is much to be answered for outside them.”

Dwalin blinked. He still did not look up, but his fingers twitched on the arms of his chair.

“I could not get to the door,” he said quietly and stiffly, as if he had not used his voice in a long while, “Not even to open it for you, Thorin.”

Thorin sensed that there was something afoot; a strange shadow seemed to shroud Dwalin, like a cloak that was made of something darker and heavier than air but no more tangible. Dwalin seemed lost in it, or _because_ of it. Thorin could not really tell which. The orange flickers of the firelight were somehow like whispers crossing Dwalin’s face; whispers that Thorin could almost hear and that made the room turn cold despite the heat from the fire. Thorin did not like it. There could be only one Master in Erebor…..

“What keeps you here, like a prisoner in your own rooms?” Thorin asked Dwalin impatiently, “I have much need of you. I have just come from the Hall of the Ill Ones, and who did I find there but Kili with a basket of bread. He had some interesting words for me – a cover, no doubt. I see his mind as clearly as if it were a book open before me. He thinks he can use the Ill Ones to stage a coup on me – that he can win their loyalty with a few handfuls of mouldy bread and set them upon my city and then claim my throne for his own among the spoils! Rash, foolish boy. He is no threat to me, of course – you and I shall see him justly served - but his foolish plans have given me thought – _why should we not use them_?”

Thorin was no longer looking at Dwalin but deep into the fire instead, so caught up now in the crafting and laying of plans that he did not see the expression that fell across Dwalin’s face.

“The ravens will soon be back with news from the South,” Thorin continued, “Why should we not, Dwalin?! The madness of those hoards - their unbridled violence – perhaps it is not the misfortune we have thought it. Indeed it is a gift – a mighty gift! Mordor will defeat Isengard, I am sure of it. If we send them, we could win the spoils of it! The treasures of Orthanc. A palantiri, Dwalin! Imagine what we could do with such a thing! Yes, yes. It becomes clear to me now. But I will need you to get up – there is much work to be done.”

Thorin turned to Dwalin again, but the sight of him was so changed and startling that Thorin instantly recoiled. Dwalin’s face had become twisted, his lips receding to bare his gums, and his body had become ridged and tense and a horrible light had filled his eyes. He looked as if he were wrecked with crying; only he made no sound and dropped no tear.

“I know why Kili brought them bread.” he whispered slowly and painfully. There was a catch in his voice.

Thorin shuddered. He had no tolerance for this devilry, whatever it was: he had decided long ago that he would only have short dealings with it. If Dwalin had gone mad like the rest of them, then Thorin would find him a home in one of his pits - and then Dwalin would march as one with the legions, when the time came to send them out! Yet still, Thorin would make such use of him as could first be made. He had no taste for madness; but he wasn’t foolish.

“Why was it then? Speak, if you ought to say.” He said hurriedly.

Dwalin turned sad eyes to him and Thorin had to look away.

“Because he still has hope,” Dwalin croaked out of his dry throat, and it was then that Thorin realised that Dwalin wasn’t weeping _because he was all dried out_ , “Even now…

“Do you know what happens to them, Thorin?” Dwalin continued, shifting slightly forward towards him in his chair, “First the uncontrollable laughter, then they develop strange habits; picking off their fingernails and using their hands like claws, walking bow-legged, speaking to each other only in sounds. Like animals. You have just _pushed them away_ , to dark places where you do not have to think of them. But I had to bring them there. I had to force them in when they would not go. You have not had to see the faces of Dwarves you once knew…..”

Dwalin stopped, too horrified for the moment to continue, and Thorin didn’t know how to answer him. No, he had never done it…..but why should he?! Was it not his prerogative as King to give out orders? Was he not busy defending Erebor, keeping Erebor, prospering Erebor? Was not his every waking moment consumed with it? If Dwalin had lost his stomach for the job then he should have come to Thorin and Thorin would have passed it over to some lesser Dwarf for his sake. He should not now be hiding in his room, snivelling emptily by the fire.

“They forget themselves down there, Thorin.” Dwalin continued as the light of unspeakable horrors flooded his eyes, “That is why Kili brings them bread. He hopes that by doing so he can keep them from forgetting themselves. Who knows if it might work for a moment; but nothing can bring them back now.”

Thorin did not want to hear the details; a King could not be bogged down by such things when there was so much that required his attention. He turned one shoulder to Dwalin, hoping to block out something of the terrible expression on his face.

“You’ve lost your constitution,” Thorin said, “I am not unfeeling; I can see how it may happen. But rouse yourself now and turn your hands to other things. Someone else can take that charge for a while.”

Dwalin turned away from Thorin and sank further into his chair. The strange shadow about his shoulders sank deeper around him and Thorin felt that they might soon become one, the chair and the Dwarf, netted into that same shadow. Thorin wondered if he shouldn’t pull Dwalin from it – but it was too strange and he shuddered and turned away.

“No,” Dwalin answered slow and toneless, “I can never rise again, not now, not after what I have seen and done. I had to put Bombur in the pit, Thorin. He ate Bofur. Down there, in the green light. _He ate Bofur_ …..”

~

“Thorin Oakenshield, what have you done to my son?!”

Thorin jerked into consciousness. Had he been dreaming? Had he fallen asleep? He rubbed his eyes with his thumb and forefinger. They were dry and sore – he had been staring into the fire. His body ached with the slow numbness of inaction. Where was he? Thorin looked around: his study. The flames were tall. They had been growing. How long had he been here? There was no light at the windows - but that didn’t tell him much. What had he been doing? The impression of a conversation lingered over him. Flames upon flames upon flames.

“What happened to him? Thorin!”

Someone was banging on his study door. What was it? There was something on his mind, clawing at its edges. Some urgency. Some pressing need. He’d been in the middle of something, or close to it….

“There’s something you’re not telling me Thorin and I will have it from you! He’s my son…… _my son_!”

And then it came to him: _Fili_.

Thorin leapt from his chair. In two paces he was at the doors, pulling them open. A dwarf woman stood behind them, her eyes red from crying. Thorin knew her. She had royal braids.

“Dis.” He said. Where had she come from? Her hands were closed into fists, trembling.

“What’s happened? Where is Fili?”

Thorin felt a little dizzy. The air seemed thick and heavy.

“You haven’t been to see him,” Dis said “None of it makes any sense……”

“Take me to him now.”

Her eyes flashed dark and resentful.

“Come now or don’t, I fear it has been too late for him for a long time. But I will have the truth from you, Thorin…..it is not natural.”

Dis turned around and started walking away. Thorin heaved slowly after her, thudding clumsily like a bull in mud. Strange sluggishness: his limbs, his mind. She walked quickly, but not so quickly that he couldn’t keep up. He followed her down corridors and through many rooms. The stones of the floor rang hollow beneath his boots. Where they rotten inside? Hadn’t he given them strong foundations?

At last they came to Fili and Kili’s rooms. Dis signalled for him to be quiet as she gently wrapped one hand around the door knob and turned it. The door was silent as it slid slowly open into the hall. A pale light washed over the floor from behind it. Thorin could hear voices whispering. Dis beckoned him forward.

“Quietly,” she whispered to him, “and gently. He spooks easily. He doesn’t always know if he’s awake or dreaming....” she paused, and her face became dark with old and new fears as she looked through the gap into the room.

“Sometimes – when he’s alert, when he _knows_ – that’s worse.” She said. Thorin was silent.

Dis let go of the door knob and stepped noiselessly forward into the room, sliding through the gap. Thorin walked into the space she’d left behind. Anticipation gurgled low in his stomach. The gap between the doors seemed suddenly endless, filled with the pale blue light of the moon. Moonlight was once used to read things, Thorin remembered. Secret things, lost things. With all the attention that had gone to the sun, they had forgotten about the moon. What had it seen?

Slowly, Thorin pushed back the door. He slid into the pale light, turned around, and closed the door behind him. Voices whispered in the distance. They sounded like raindrops falling into a pond. There was a strange smell in the air, but Thorin couldn’t place it. He turned around. There were just three of them gathered in the room, standing in the far corner at the foot of the bed, looking down at something behind it. Dis and Kili and Bilbo…

Bilbo…

“Bilbo,” Thorin heard himself say, ”What – what are you _doing_ here?”

Bilbo’s hands shot nervously up into his hair.

“I can’t….” he started to say, pulling on strands, his eyes flickering, “I _cannot stay away from my friends_ Thorin….”

Thorin’s response died on his lips. There was something in what Bilbo had said, something old from a long time ago, that stopped him. Thorin almost recognised it. But what was it? Thorin just wanted Bilbo to be safe, to be preserved….

“Very well,” he said uncertainly, “but stay back.”

He started to edge closer to them, full of slow caution. He passed a pile of fish bones on the floor and glanced at them briefly.

“It’s all I can get him to eat.” Kili said.

Thorin stopped next to him and gave him a long look. Dis squeezed Kili’s shoulder.

“Take a look then,” she said to Thorin stiffly, “You’ve finally come to see him – look.”

Thorin felt something deep in his stomach tremble. An icy flush swept through his lungs. He swallowed and then very carefully, he turned his head.

Fili was at the other end of room, at the head of the bed, crouched down on the floor. He was rocking slowly back and forth on the balls of his bare feet. His hands clutched nervously at his neck and head. He was looking around him at the walls and windows with quick-moving, uneasy eyes and he was muttering little wordless noises. He seemed unaware of the rest of them and he was very pale, almost to the point of translucence. His skin looked rubbery.

“What is he doing?” Thorin whispered.

“He had a nightmare,” Kili answered, “he doesn’t know he’s awake. Mahal only knows what he can see.”

Thorin swallowed a second time.

“Is it safe to rouse him?” he asked.

Kili turned and looked at him with wide, vacant eyes.

“No….yes….who knows. You can’t predict it. He senses things. Other things – out there in the darkness. He can feel them gaining strength. He talks to the shadows. He hides from a lidless eye….”

Thorin felt himself inching closer. There was a strange light about Fili – was it coming from his eyes? Flashes of a ghoulish green seemed to strike them now and then, like lamps blinking from a far-off place.

“Fili….” He said softly. Fili showed no signs of having heard him. Thorin moved closer again, crouching down to his knees.

“Fili it’s me. It’s….uncle Thorin.”

Fili twitched. A shudder briefly crossed his face before he went back to his rocking and restless watching. He started padding at the floor with his hands, pushing his fingers into the stones as if he were testing them. Then he backed himself up further into the corner by the bed, pushing up from the floor with his fingers and toes as if they were springs. Thorin reached out, but he couldn’t bring himself to touch him.

“Fili……my son, my heir….don’t you recognise me? Can you speak to me Fili?”

Fili stilled, staring into the stone floor. For a while he just watched it, unblinking, but then he made a strange wailing sound and his body shivered as if waking from a long dream. He looked up and caught Thorin’s eyes. Recognition unfurled within his face and his eyes filled with water.

“Uncle….” He croaked, and as he opened his mouth Thorin saw that many of his teeth were lost and that those which remained had been filed to a point. His mouth was stained red with his own blood. Thorin heard Dis snatch a breath behind him. He remembered her words: _when he knows, that’s worse_. Thorin felt tight in his chest and throat. 

“Wh…. “ Fili struggled with his lips and tongue and he pawed one hand at Thorin helplessly “Wha……. _what’s happening to me_?” he managed to croak out.

A tear slid from his round, frightened eye. He held both hands up to his mouth as if he could hide the terrible sight of what was happening to his face from Thorin, and then he squealed into them. The sound pierced the air; sharp, terrified anguish. It ripped through Thorin like an arrow. He could feel it ripping through the room. It seemed to make even the walls shudder. What kind of new horror was this? Thorin knew nothing like it. The Ill Ones were one thing….but those closest to him, his nephews that were like his own sons…..it was never supposed to reach them. Thorin had known there would be some darkness, of course he had. But this…..whatever this was…..he hadn’t predicted this. He couldn’t ever have imagined it, or worse….

“I don’t know, Fili” he mumbled softly, “I don’t……I didn’t….”

Fili lifted his hands and pushed his fingers into his hair. Shapes crossed the irises of his eyes as he flicked them around the dimly lit room. They dilated as if he were seeing things, reacting to shadows that Thorin couldn’t perceive. Fili began to claw at his head, padding at his scalp and the roots of his hair. Thorin watched him, feeling helpless. The room was deathly still; only Fili’s quiet whimpering could be heard. Thorin could feel the moonlight on his back. He was at a loss for what to do. The stillness was consuming.

Eventually Fili let out a moan and a shudder and he fell forward onto the palms of his hands. It took them all a few seconds to realise that some strands of his hair had come with them; little lines of golden rays meshed between his fingers. Fili stared at them. Thorin stared at Fili. Then slowly, Fili raised his hands to his head once more and as he drew his fingers through his hair and lifted them away, more strands tumbled loose and fell about him like yellow rose petals. Fili watched them slip between his fingers. His thin lips parted and he let out a little whine and then, so quickly that Thorin didn’t have chance to intervene, he started pulling whole chunks of hair away from his head. They lifted smoothly off his scalp, like leaves that had died long ago being blown away by the wind; like perfectly cooked meat falling flawlessly off the bone. It was so shocking that at first, they could no nothing but watch.

They didn’t even realise that Fili was screaming until they could feel the vibrations shaking the room.

Kili ran to him, knocking past Thorin to fold Fili into his arms with no small shudder at the touch of his thin, grey body and he tried to rock him gently. Thorin fell back away from them. Fili’s terrible screaming filled his ears and flooded his senses, leaving him dumb and motionless. It wasn’t until he could feel Dis pulling on his shoulder that Thorin had the sense to move. He let her tugging guide him, stumbling over his large boots and the many folds and falls of his furs and coats as he clumsily got to his feet and followed her back out of the room.

As soon as they were back out in the corridor, Dis slammed the door behind them. Thorin felt her let go of his shoulder and he stumbled as he turned around to face her. She was leaning against the door, her face buried into her hands. Thorin was aware that she was sobbing. He let her sob for a while and tried to make sense of what he’d just seen – but what could it be? For the first time since this whole business had begun – back _then_ ; that terrible dawn and the ice-tipped mountains – Thorin realised that _he had missed something_ …

Dis stirred in front of him. She lifted her head out of her hands and gave him a look of great sadness and tiredness.

“I have been found wanting,” she said, her voice touched with a bleak resignation, “I should have done more – much more. Acted sooner. Tried harder. Listened to Kili – I should have stepped in. But I trusted…” her voice broke and her eyes flooded over and she sobbed once more, “I trusted that such things were not for me to know. I trusted that all was in hand. I knew that a great darkness was coming - that we were preparing to endure a long hibernation – and that what you wanted for us was to hold fast, look away, and _just get through it_. We looked to the sky and watched the ending of the sun, and we thought that was the darkness we’d expected. But the darkness was already here, within these walls, wasn’t it? Ere long before the sun had started to fade. It began here, I now think.”

She looked at Thorin and her expression became hard and torn. Thorin wanted her to go on – what did she guess?! What had she learned, what could she put together that he could not? – but he knew that she wouldn’t. In the end, she was not a queen or a princess or an historian – she was a mother. She had only one care left.

“Tell me the truth Thorin,” she said slowly and dangerously, “ _What happened to my son?_ ”

She lifted from the door and began to walk slowly towards Thorin.

“He speaks, you know. In his sleep. During the nightmares. He calls out for our father, our grandfather….he says _don’t let it take me_. He screams and he holds out his hand as if there were someone there who could take hold of it and pull him back. But nobody ever does, and then he wakes and he cannot remember where he is or who he is he asks me _where have the halls gone_. He cannot eat. He grows gaunt and he slinks around always half in shadow…….Thorin! Do not tell me that what you have seen is some illness! Fili is not sick, he is………”

Dis’ anger and voice trailed off as she hesitated to name her worse fear. Thorin could feel his heart thudding in his chest. His palms were lined with sweat and he could taste metal in his mouth. It could not be… _it could not be_. Not this….anything but this….Fili….

“He is a miracle.” Thorin muttered, remembering what he had once commanded, the celebrations, the feasting, the joy…..

“He is not right!” Dis cried out, “This is no miracle….”

“He is a miracle,” Thorin repeated, “he did not die……”

“Thorin!” Dis shouted and she pointed back at the door to Fili’s room, “Stop it! _He’s dead_.” Her face twisted with grief and she let her tears stream down her face to drip from her lips, “ _He is still dead_ , isn’t he? That creature in here……it is my son and yet not my son. It is alive and yet it is not alive. And he _knows_. He remembers Fili….he remembers that life and Ered Luin and you and his father….he talks to his father, sometimes. Like he’s re-living a conversation he had with him, and not one he ever had on this earth. He can remember his death. He knows that he is…..that he has become….some lesser, tormented thing that you wouldn’t even find in the darkest pit in all of Mordor! He is a son of Durin and a descendent of the royal line and my first born son and he should be received in honour with his family around him in the Timeless Halls _and yet this is what has become of him._ What hope has he now, Thorin?”

Dis walked up to Thorin and placed her hands onto his arms and gripped them and gave him a look of such anger and resentment that Thorin began to feel afraid…

“There is nothing left for him now but a half-life of this endless torment, forever in the shadow of what he once was. So you will forgive me if I have had enough of your lies and of checking my tongue……. _tell me what really happened at Ravenhill…..”_

~

_The sun tips the horizon and strikes the ice, breaking the light into refractions of colour. The wind, pushing the clouds away overhead, is cold and fresh. There are eagles in the distance, circling high on invisible currents, and the air is clear for miles and miles around. Everything looks crisp and clean, as if it has been washed and freshly painted and polished so that it shines. The mountains glimmer with morning dew. The night is ended._

_But it is not yet over._

_“It does not appear that you can win”_

_Thorin expects it to be horrible. He expects his skin to crawl and his insiders to shudder; he expects to be disgusted and to recoil. He expects evil to be what everyone always says it is – dark and loathsome, something that good people, those of honour and valour, would turn away from, their stomachs sick. But that is not how he feels now, on this mountain top, in the sun. Instead he feels…..drawn._

_“If I release him you will kill him, but he will also kill you.”_

_Azog’s face in the ice blinks. His hand twitches involuntarily on the sword that is sliced up through Thorin’s foot. Thorin wonders if Azog knows he is being held there, under the water like a piece of frozen time. Suddenly he pities him as a pawn in someone else’s fate; never really with a destiny of his own, not even at the gates of Moria; no more than a thing, really, like a warg or a mutt; useful to his master’s purpose._

_“I have never been against your retaking the mountain. Your kind belongs there. It was never I who stood in your way; all along it has been men and elves that have hindered you.”_

_Thorin remembers elf dungeons and arrows and dark faces in Bree and paying what little gold they had to be smuggled in barrels of fish as if they were not honourable, as if they were something foul to be hidden. He remembers blacksmithing, the sad redundancy of his higher-skilled hands, and men tossing coins at him for trinkets like he was little more than a street-fair gimmick. They had all been pleasant and courteous enough, back when he’d had gold and the title of Prince; how little they must truly have thought of him to have delighted so much in his downfall. Such little aid, such simple greed, such cold disinterest. Is it still a joke to them? Are his people never to find the acceptance they so longed for?_

_“Everyone deserves somewhere to call home. Men and Elves….they believe it should all be theirs. The first-born and the second-born they call themselves. They see this earth as a birth-right. How precious. How entitled. How demanding they are of you, as well – gems, gold, aid where they would give none themselves.”_

_Thorin looks down to the pale face behind the ice once more. Yes, Men and Elves are the enemy – but what of Azogs sword?_

_“Mercenaries. Looters. Vultures come in the hopes of picking clean the bones of war. I am forced to make such use of orcs and goblins as I can, for none else will deal with me and I must have some aid whatever its shape. Do not forget that it was Thranduil who came for you first, with Bard in his wing. Where there is war, dark creatures will gather. Even I can do nothing about that.”_

_When he was but a little dwarrow, Thorin had been taught that Elves could not feel, because they had become too old for it; that the long stretch of their immortality had dulled every last feeling within them to such thin, depthless ruminations that they could hardly be called feelings at all, and that the mortal life had as such become little more to them than the ending of one day and the beginning of another. He had also been taught that it was not so with Men. Men were too young; they felt everything too deeply and in all the wrong ways. But dwarves had struck the right balance, and that was why Men and Elves despised them so; for it was the Unwanted Children who lived best._

_“I understand your pain. Of anyone, I know best what it is to be dealt with the fickle hand of Men and Elves. They loved me once. They praised me above all others and went to great lengths to seek me out and learn my lore. They called me the Giver of Gifts, and indeed my gifts were great. I wrought many wonders for them. Then, when they had learned from me all their minds could fathom, they turned against me. Consumed with their lustful hunger for knowledge and power they made a villain of me, named me the Great Deceiver, and drove me out.”_

_Yes, it is familiar. They want, want, want. Always it is the same; in Erebor before the dragon; in Moria before Durin’s baine. It is always something with Elves and Men, and yet when their help is needed, when Mahal’s children ask for aid, where are they? The Elves ‘say neither yay nor nay’. Men complain loudly of their own troubles. And Durin’s folk suffer. Always, do Durin folk suffer; driven out of home after home; cheated of their heritage and possessions, shunned from mountain top to river; neglected by the rest of Middle-Earth._

_“I have endured many long years of banishment….but I am not the Great Deceiver that Men and Elves have made me out to be. They have cheated me, but I have come back. I, too, have come back to claim what is rightfully mine.”_

_Thorin, in the quiet places of his heart where bravado and pride could not follow, just wants to live. He wants a home for his family and a place where his people – his long-suffering, long-wandering people – can finally rest their feet and find acceptance. They had not asked to be born. They had been made in secret, but not with consent. All they have ever wanted is the right to live upon the earth that they love so much. But he understands now that they will never be given their place within the world – for if not here at Erebor, this lonely peak so far away from everyone else, then nowhere would they be tolerated. Where is the sense in waiting for an acceptance that could never be offered? If they are to have a home, to have what is rightfully theirs, then clearly they cannot wait until Elves and Men are happy to accommodate them. They will have to make their own, as they had before, only this time…..this time they will keep it._

_“I have for you a proposition. We share the same grief and the same complaint, and we are seeking the same restitution. I will not ask you for a hand in mine, but I offer you my help with yours, if you will take it. For then you will know that my word is good, and my power great, and my reputation will begin to be restored._

_Firstly, as a gesture of good faith I will restore to you what the Orcs have destroyed. When you leave this mountain-top, you will find that the acts of their swords were not as deadly as you might have thought. This I will do for you freely, in the generosity of my nature._

_Secondly, when you take up your throne once more I will extend to you my good will. I go from here to continue in my plans against Elves and Men and none shall hinder me…but you Thorin Oakenshield I will protect. Your home and your wealth shall prosper and you will become rich and powerful like none other before you. I offer you my friendship, and I treat my friends well. All I ask in return is that when the time comes, you will remember this friendship and that you will not betray me as I have been betrayed before.”_

_Thorin looks around at the mountains shimmering in the early morning sun. There is birdsong in the clear air. The day will grow to be a strong one, full of bright sunshine and pleasant heat; a good day for throwing open doors and windows and for driving out the dust of the last one hundred and seventy-one years. There is no pain in his foot or chest. He feels confident, like he has not felt confident in a long, long while. In his mind plans begin to take shape; he sees himself, seated secure in the Throne Room of Erebor, watching the world darken before him. He sees himself locking the gate and storing the key. He sees that a vengeance is coming, a dark and terrible storm, and he sees that they will be all the stronger for having known that it was coming. And what of those who are not forewarned? Thorin thinks little of them – what about Kili and Fili and his friends and his people waiting back in Ered Luin? What of their lives and what was owed to them? It would not be a costly friendship, and Thorin is no fool. He recognises that he would be in a good position, one from which he could work ends to his own interest. And he is being asked to promise so little……_

_The knife end draws painlessly back through his foot and into the water beneath the ice. Of its own will, it sinks to the bottom. Azog’s white hand does not clutch after it. The eyes that had from time to time been twitching at up at Thorin now seem like little more than glass. He goes almost peacefully - and Thorin cannot remember why he has ever feared him, the Pale Orc, so inconsequential he now seems. It is so easy, so painless, so simple. It makes him question why he has allowed himself to suffer for so long, if it is this simple. How needless it now all seems._

_It would not be a costly friendship…._

_“Do we have an understanding, Thorin son of Thrain?”_

_It could not be a costly friendship…_

_“Yes.”_

_“Then from your grandfather to you, I give you this gift, which is mine to give and yours by right, as a sign of our new friendship.”_

_A ring is held out to him. Onxy encased in gold. A blue sapphire in the helm. Thror’s ring. Thorin trembles as he takes it. Oh, but this is a prize! Such a prize he could never have anticipated! He trembles as he thinks about it. The power that he would have with this ring! The wealth he would command! The strength it would put into Erebor’s re-built walls! Thranduil could mock him no more….Thorin has won!_

_He encloses his fist over the ring and then chances a look up at the Gift Giver, but in his dream Thorin can’t see him: he is blurred out of the memory by the strength of the sunlight and has become this presence, this voice, just beyond sight behind his shoulder. But Thorin knows that He is there. The part of him that is aware that he is dreaming realises suddenly that He has been there ever since, just out of sight behind his shoulder. He never left…._

_It would not be a costly friendship…._

Thorin woke up, bathed in sweat. He had been writhing so hard in his bed that he had become twisted into his bed sheets. He struggled quickly to untangle himself; he was hot, so hot, his blood was burning with fever. He fell to the hard stone floor naked as the day he was born and looked wildly around him. What was burning? The fire – that endless, consuming fire – had finally gone out. There was no sound in the entire kingdom.

“No…..”

How had he not seen it coming? Why had it not occurred to him before? How could he have thought that they would all escape destruction? The Great Deceiver….even _He_ had called himself so.

“No……!”

Thorin pressed down into the cold floor. The burning was his hand, his finger. Hot, hot, burning; danger! Fire! Blood! Thorin looked down at his hand. Thror’s ring glowed bright with heat. It mocked him. It burned into his skin. He could smell the stench of his own flesh cooking. Thror’s ring…..The Great Deceiver! Sauron!

Fili…..

“Noooooooooooo!”

But there was no one there to hear his cries. He was too late. He clutched his burning hand and began to weep.

What had he done?

~


	4. One

Gimli leaned further out from the side of the mountain.

He feared neither the edge nor being seen by those beneath and across from him. His mother had told him to use the darkness, to mould it to useful purpose, as only Dwarves could. Below, the strange creature on its dark horse craned its neck and opened its over-large mouth, revealing many long, pointed, spear-like teeth. They flashed white, like steal in the moonlight.

“My Master has not the luxury to further extend his patience. Sixty years he hath given thee. Time presses now.”

In the gloom, Gimli was just about able to see that there was something else tied to the horse. A dark thing, padding the ground and looking up at the mountain in front of it with eyes that shone like polished glass.

“I need…..a little more time. There are….things….to consider”

Thorin’s voice laboured over his thick lips and even thicker tongue. Gimli recognised him only from his armour and what little he could see of Thorin’s eyes; the rest was grotesque and bloated. His brow creased with disbelief: what was this?

“My Master bids thee remember thy oath. Thou hath benefited; now uphold thy covenant.”

Thorin bowed his head and looked at the walls of the battlements as if he could curse them for not being taller. He seemed a small thing despite his size, far off in the cold darkness; putting up small excuses and wishing that the shadows would swallow him up. This was no King, Gimli realised: this was an ill-used dog, cowering from his master’s fist.

“The preparations….will take some time….themselves. Tell your master that.” Thorin croaked out as loud as he could across the gate bridge that separated the two of them. His chest rose and fell heavily.

The creature cocked its head, jerking the massive appendage in a quick, bird-like manner that to Gimli seemed out of place for something so large and weighty. For a while it considered Thorin’s words before splitting its face again with a vast, toothy grin. It had no eyes, Gimli noted: it was all mouth, blistered by heat and ash.

“My Master leaves instruction: I shall come again in thirty days and therein collect the debt. Upon that day, thou shalt be ready.”

From his position hidden in the shrubbery and the cliff, Gimli watched as Thorin nodded to the creature, wide and frightened eyes washing over with brief relief. He saw shadows behind Thorin; the shapes of other dwarves silent and shamed, watching on in horror. There was not an ounce or hint of resistance in any of them, and Gimli could not understand it. There could be no mistake – the thing was from Mordor. But where these not his own Kin? Where these not Sons of Durin, Dwarves of Erebor, honourable and ready for any fight? How could those of Durin’s line do business with Mordor, even in appearances – if that was all it would turn out to be? Gimli felt in the sinking of his stomach that it was not. Thorin was complicit. That such a thing had happened….that such a thing was _continuing to happen_ …not only turned Gimli’s stomach, but made his heart heavy with grief and shame.

The creature spoke again.

“Meantime, my master asks a trinket of thy good will, to show that thou art still His true friend and will hold to thy promise in thirty days: only a small thing, the least of things, which thou shalt not miss.”

Thorin bowed his head once more.

“What is it?”

“A ring,” Mordor’s envoy answered, “the least of rings, a ring thou dost not wear, a ring thou dost not know of. A ring that my Master gave unto this creature by my side for safe-keeping, but that was stolen from him. Return this ring now and we shall leave placated.”

In the gloom, Thorin’s eyes dilated and he muttered “Bilbo’s ring?”

“Nay,” the envoy replied, “My Masters ring. Bring forth Baggins.”

At the word ‘Baggins’ the slinking creature on the ground looked up at the mountain in front of it with a sudden desperateness. Gimli could hear it hissing; eager, hungry, vengeful. From behind Thorin, someone said “No, Thorin. No, not Bilbo….” But Thorin only looked to the ground, his eyes, small in the swallow of the thick flesh on his face, sad but powerless. Gimli had met Bilbo once before, years ago when contact between Erebor and the Blue Mountains had still been maintained. He remembered a pleasant, rosy-cheeked hobbit with a generous spirit and quick smile. He remembered how well the others had spoken of him, how much he had risked for them all in the days of the Quest. He was one of them – part of their family, closer to blood than even Gimli was and all because of Thorin. Thorin couldn’t give him up. Thorin wouldn’t give him up. Gimili looked across the gloom to the hunched form at the head of the battlements.

Thorin was going to give him up.

It was enough: whatever was going on here, innocent blood would _not_ be spilled, not while Gimli son of Gloin still stood, covered in the shadows he had made from the enemy’s own darkness. Thorin was muttering _just give it to them_ and he must truly have lost all judgement if he thought this envoy would be satisfied with just the ring and not the blood of him who ‘stole’ it. The dwarf shadows behind Thorin scurried - vague noises but nothing more – and from the doors in the long, hard walls of Erebor a frightened but obedient hobbit emerged.

How like Bilbo, Gimli realised, to put Thorin first, even now.

In his hand, Gimli’s axe was beginning to stir. It was solid and reassuring amid the confused wrongness. He lifted it and felt its strength; this, this was something that he could always trust to. The madness he was witnessing had gone on long enough: what was he waiting for?

With a roar that frightened all manner of dark things from the branches of the trees around them, Gimli lifted his axe and threw himself off the edge of the cliff. His body plummeted downward, like a boulder falling, and he raised his axe above his head with both hands. His aim was fast and true; Mordor’s envoy looked up only for the heavy iron of Gimli’s boots to connect with its face. Gimli crashed into it and its horse buckled and the three of them fell to the ground. The envoy gave a cry of surprise and anguish that was like ice cracking, and as Gimli untangled himself and thrust his axe deep into the neck of the dark horse he was aware that above him, his Kin had sprung from their shadows and were staring down at him from the battlements.

Gimli made short work of Mordor’s envoy; the thing had no weapon and was stunned from being thrown from its horse. One swift swing of his axe roaring through the air and the over-large, teeth-stuffed head came thudding down to the ground, spraying black blood across the stone. It had been quick, clean work; but in the scramble on the ground the other creature had loosed itself from the fallen horse and scarpered for the hills. Gimli looked to see if it was still within range, but the cursed thing had swift feet and hands and had already disappeared. Gimli didn’t give it much further thought – it was just one more dark thing slinking in the wilds. Instead he wiped his axe clean of the black blood of Mordor and turned around and looked up at the walls of Erebor.

Four faces, pale and startled, stared back at him.

~

There is no silence deeper, Gimli thought, than that of shame.

Across the smoke-stained stone a single smeared line of blood was drying where Thorin, his breathing newly free but still labouring, lay bundled against a wall. The stone swallowed some of his sobbing, but it was the silence that swallowed the rest and that bent the other four heads in the room to the floor. It was the silence, Gimli thought, that was keeping them there: not Thor’s ring which was still lying and cooling slowly where it had fallen, not Thorin’s severed finger which was shrivelling as the blood dried where Gimli had sliced it off with his axe; but the silence of their shame. On the walls surrounding him where many marks and stains and emblems and the air was sluggish like treacle and time seemed to have stopped, but Gimli sat on the cold stone and knew that there was nothing he could do but grieve. He was just like the rest of them: too ashamed.

He could have said _what has passed here_ , but he felt he already understood the sum of it and that if there was any more to be said, it should be to someone properly equipped to judge what to do with it. Gimli could not: he hadn’t the heart. He might have asked _how could you_ , but he knew that they were already questioning themselves harder over that than he could ever question them himself, and so he did not see the need. He struggled the most with _where is my father_. Once or twice he nearly asked, but his courage failed him. Whatever dark answer lay waiting, he could not face it yet although he knew that he should: his mother would have asked, if she had been there. But of them all _what now_ was perhaps the hardest. Five. Five dwarves were left, in all of Erebor re-born. Only five; and they had only been given thirty days. It seemed of little consequence to Gimli, however; thirty day or three days what difference did it make? Mordor would still come. How could they hope to resist the Dark Lord, to out-wait him, to survive him? Would it not be better to die now and save the agony of waiting for it?

A thought answered him and Gimli felt a sudden rush of new coldness. Now was he truly ashamed, because of course it made a difference - one that had spurred him to kill the Mouth of Sauron to begin with - and that difference was named Bilbo Baggins. How easily Gimli had forgotten about the poor hobbit; how quickly had he given up to his grief. There might be no hope left for dwarves, but was there some, even now, for one hobbit?

Gimli coughed. The sound was almost frightening compared to the silence that had been lingering on so absolutely before it. It made them wince, although they all looked up at him regardless. Gimli felt their eyes resting on him, but he did not have words for them. Instead he looked at Bilbo; at his round, sad, earnest hobbit eyes.

“So, Master Baggins,” he said quietly, his voice making not one echo as if he were surrounded by cotton and not stone, “it seems to me that it is our duty now to hide you somehow.”

The room stirred. The other dwarves began to sit up a little straighter and to blink a little more rapidly.

“Yes,” Kili blurted out suddenly, “Yes, Bilbo, of course. Of course we must. We must get you back to the Shire, or….or somewhere unexpected, where the enemy will not look for you…”

Dis was the next to become animated, leaning forward and almost reaching out a hand.

“There are ways,” she said after her son, “Old ways, out of the mountain that may yet be unwatched. There _is_ enough time; our promise will hold off His gaze. We can help you Bilbo.”

“Yes,” Kili repeated, “we can do this…we can keep His eye fixed on us, and that will give you enough time to get away…..maybe…to the sea, Bilbo. Get across the sea…you’ll be safe there.”

Gimli listened to them. Their grief had been so overpowering, only seconds ago. It was still there, of course, and they would live in its shadow for the rest of their lives and it would not give them a moment’s respite; but how much more powerful was it to think of Bilbo and not themselves.

Bilbo had gone pink and there were tears welling in his eyes. He was mumbling that he did not want to go, that he could not bring himself to go, that they would never be able to convince him otherwise, but as he continued Thorin suddenly moved and pushed himself away from the wall and looked over at Bilbo and called his name softly. Bilbo stopped protesting. He looked over at Thorin as his tears slowly began to fall down his cheeks. Gimli could not describe the look that Thorin was giving Bilbo; it was filled with too many things to name.

“Bilbo,” Thorin said, and while his voice was breaking it was so much more like his own voice than it had been in a long while, “You are only here because of me. These troubles are yours because of me. I have kept you here out of selfishness and greed. I have wronged you in so many ways. I have brought this darkness down upon us all, but you I trapped within it deliberately when you need to be - and wanted to be - elsewhere. I should have let you go years ago. But these terrible consequences – this fast concluding doom – it is not yours to bear. Let us find a way to spare you – please, let us help you – and then, at this last hour, you can say that you helped us to preserve some small part of our honour from the darkness that has consumed our history, because then you will be safe.”

There was no answering Thorin. If such words existed, no one in that room knew them. Instead, Gimli stood up slowly from the floor and picked up his axe.

“It is all we can do now, Master Baggins.” He said.

Just then, a faint rustling of wings disturbed the otherwise stoic air of the guard room. A slight breeze and the smell of sea salt and fields came after it and the five of them looked up towards a crack, which once might have been a window, in the wall. There, perched on the broken stone, was a dove. Against the murk and the gloom it seemed almost spectral and for a while Gimli wasn’t sure if it were really there or if it were some kind of trick; a stray ray of light, let loose from the dark confides of the clouds to cause a whole new kind of mischief, maybe. But then its little, dusty white head twitched and it dropped something from its beak and then lifted itself up off the stone and flew away. No one spoke. Slowly, Gimli walked over to the thing it had dropped from its beak. Picking it up, he saw that it was a piece of paper folded many times over into a small square. There was one rune scrawled over the top fold – the elven rune for K. Gimli turned it over a few times with his fingers. The paper was old and travel stained. Then, wordlessly, he turned around and handed it over to Kili.

Kili took it from him a little hesitantly and just looked at it for a while. Then he started to slowly unfold the paper, revealing bit by bit a letter. The silence in the room was different now; the quiet, deep, pregnant silence of things that could not be spoken aloud. Kili read the letter to himself, looking down at it as if he were afraid to trust the feel of it between his fingers. Eventually he looked up and gave them all a look of hope mixed with confusion.

“It’s……it’s from Tauriel.” He said slowly. Gimli was only vaguely aware of who that was. His father had mentioned briefly something about a rouge elf who unexpectedly helped them during the Quest, but judging from the way Kili’s hands were trembling and the sudden almost-desperate need that had unfurled within his eyes, Gimli guessed it was more than that. No one said anything and Kili seemed just as lost for words, so instead he looked down at the letter again and read it aloud to them.

“ _Kili,_

_The darkness that has overtaken these lands has many forms, and while we can no longer see the light, it does not mean that it is not there. Know as I do that the stars still shine, and will always shine, despite the clouds that cover them. And like the darkness of the clouds, there is another darkness that attempts to keep from you from what has always been, and will always be, yours. You must remember that this darkness is named Deceit and that you must never believe it or what it tries to persuade you of. May the blessing of elves and dwarves and all free folk keep you from this darkness and may my love, which is everlasting, be a hope unto you as you struggle on so alone. Hope may be costly, but there is always good reason to maintain it._

_We are not all gone. Some of us remain. We are not many, but we are still here and we believe we have work still do to before all hope is lost entirely. Our strength no longer lies in the reach of our swords, but in our togetherness and our cunning. We are gathering in Imladris, where Mithrandril bids all who can and are willing to come. Come, should you be free._

_My last words to you, for now, are a warning: the enemy is seeking Bilbo. There is more to his tale of the goblin caves than he had previously let known. Bilbo has in his possession something that the enemy greatly wants; do not let it fall into His hands. I grieve to put such a request on your already-burdened shoulders, but should He come into possession of it then our last hope will be gone._

_Untill we meet again,_

_T._ ”

The room stilled. Gimli felt once more the horror of what had nearly come to pass, only hours ago, at Erebor’s step. But it had not happened, and surely that was more important than the reality of what might have been. Blame, he decided, could not help them now. They would have all the time in the world to divide up the blame between them when – _if_ – they failed this last task. But it was clear to him now what they must do, and if none of the rest of them had the wits or strength left to say it, then he would.

“Well that settles it,” he said, “Bilbo must go to this Imladris, wherever it is, and one of us must take him.”

When no one answered him, but only passed each other sheepish looks, he tried again. He planted his axe firmly on the ground and leaned heavily onto it.

“The elf’s letter was very clear. We agreed that we must get Bilbo away – so to Imlardis we must take him.”

“This letter has got to be months old…” Kili said, the fear obvious in his voice, “It is dated 29th of July….I…I cannot even be sure _when_ that was.”

“You have not been here, Gimli” Dis said softly, “we have known such things…and how convenient this letter seems, arriving just at this moment, asking us to send what the enemy most seeks out into the wilds, on a whim, into danger….and even if it is genuine, it was written so long ago. We may have missed the meeting in Imladris. There may never have been a meeting – they may never have made it themselves. How can we expect to trust it now? Perhaps it is better not to alter our plan, and send Bilbo across the sea like we said.”

Her words gave Gimli more insight into what it must have happened here, in this once-great city. Such mistrust could only come from the very worst betrayal and Gimli saw briefly the blindness and confusion it would have brought with it. But Dis was right in one thing: he had no share in it.

“The enemy could not have known that we would strike down his messenger. Even if He knows now what has been its fate, He could not have got a message such as this one to us so quickly. If you cannot see clearly, then let me see for you.”

“Very well, say it is genuine,” Thorin said gruffly from the floor, “What of Dis’ other points? What if we send Bilbo away with what the enemy seeks and he reaches Imladris only to find no one there or worse; their corpses?”

Gimli gave Thorin a very hard look.

“That is a risk we must be willing to take to see this business through. It would be faithless not to try.”

“It is cruel to ask us to raise such hopes after all we have been through. Perhaps Bilbo would _rather_ take the path towards the sea.”

“Then let us ask him. Mr Baggins?”

Bilbo looked up and Gimli studied him closely. He looked thin and warn and too pale, like a flower that had been kept from sunlight. The marks of the years were easy to see upon him, but there was something there, some light inside him, that was yet untouched.

“I will go to Rivendale,” Bilbo said eventually, “I…I would like to place my trust in _good_ , for once – that good can prevail despite everything – and not believe so utterly in the strength of the darkness, though it causes me strain. I think that, in the end, I want to be able to say I did that. That I still had hope. That the enemy couldn’t take that away from me, despite everything that has happened. It means something, I think.”

“You will be hunted,” Thorin said harshly, “The enemy is seeking you. He will not give up. He will be swift and vengeful.”

Bilbo gave Thorin a sad smile.

“Even so,” he said, “I will go. My choice is to have faith.”

“Then it is settled,” Gimli said, “Bilbo is to go, and I will go with him. I have made it this far, from the Iron Hills; I have devised a way of slipping through the darkness unseen. I need only to know the way, and then I can see it done.”

Despite the sadness and the danger and the slight sense that maybe they were all being taken for fools, now that they had decided upon a course of action it seemed to settle something within them. Gimli could feel it spreading across the room; a sense that, after so long in the dark, they were beginning to see things again.

“Collect your things, Mr Baggins. We should leave swiftly.” He said.

“Bilbo….” Thorin moved quickly, pushing himself up off the floor with his good hand and shuffling over to him, ”Don’t…..don’t put it on. The ring. I know now what it is. Don’t use it, whatever the temptation.” Thorin gently closed his hand over Bilbo’s.

“Oh,” Bilbo said, staring down at where Thorin’s hand crossed his own, “You see, the thing is….I…I don’t exactly have it. Not anymore. Gandalf – when we last saw him, I can’t remember how long ago it was now – Gandalf said ‘send it away, Bilbo. Send it to Frodo’ and I did, although it upset me at the time for reasons I quite can’t remember. So you see, I haven’t had it for some time now. There was something about it being in Erebor that Gandalf didn’t _like_ ….”

It took them all a few seconds to realise that the sound slowly coming from Thorin was quiet laughter.

“Can it be,” he said eventually, “Can it really be true? I have known only darkness, seen only darkness and become even that very darkness; and yet my friends…. my _friends_ ….have been there all along, working things for good, safeguarding against the disaster I would bring. I am thrice-shamed: as a king, as a father and as a friend. But by my beard! It is bigger than me. Thank Alue that it is bigger than me. You were right to place your trust in faith, Bilbo. May that faith preserve you. The one ring! They knew I hadn’t the strength not to give it up, and so they took it away from me and saved us all from the very worst that could happen…There is no time to waste now. You must go, and go swiftly.”

Thorin pressed Bilbo’s hand with deep feeling and for a few seconds they looked intently at each other, but Gimli could hardly name what passed between them. He looked away out to the wide horizon through the cracks and holes in the wall. The wind had picked up on the other side of it and a fresh breeze blew between the stones. How many great and innumerable uncertainties there were out there, on this road they had chosen to take? Who could say what would be the end of it all? He turned to see that Bilbo had come to stand by his side and he smiled at him.

“It occurs to me now Mr Baggins,” Gimli said, “That while it may pass through places that trouble us - that we may not like very much - this road that we call life never really stops, you know.”

Bilbo nodded.

“Yes,” he said as he thought about it, “It sort of….. goes on and on, doesn’t it?”

Gimli chuckled. He could see why his father had always spoken so highly of the hobbit; he knew how to have hope.

Gimli turned to Bilbo and gave him an encouraging look.

“Then let us keep up with it.”

 


End file.
